THE   HOOT   OF  THE   OWL 


THE   HOOT   OF  THE   OWL 


BY 


H.  H.  BEHR,  M.  D. 


SAN    FRANCISCO 
A.    M.    ROBERTSON 

1904 


COPYRIGHT,    1904 
BY  A.  M.  ROBERTSON 


THE  MURDOCK  PRESS 


THIS    LITTLE    BOOK    IS    DEDICATED 

TO    MY    FRIEND 
DR.   GEORGE    CHISMORE 


CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

ADDRESS    IN    RESPONSE    TO    THE    INTRO- 
DUCTION AT  THE  BOHEMIAN  CLUB      .  9 
VIRTUE      ......  IJ 

ARCHEOLOGY          .         .         .         .  1 7 

POPULAR  SCIENCE        ....  25 

PROGRESS  IN  SCIENCE      .         .         .         .  29 

MUSIC 33 

CALIFORNIA    .         .         .         .         .         •  37 

THE  SKELETON  IN  ARMOR            .         .  4! 

DARWINISM    ......  47 

THE  MOSQUITO  .....  53 

ON    MEDICINE               .             .             .             .             .  6l 

HEROIC    DEEDS    OF    OLD    BOHEMIA               .  65 

THE    SHOWMAN            .              .              .              .              •  73 

LAST    JINKS    ON    SACRAMENTO    STREET    .  77 

ON    DREAMS     .             .             .             .             .             .  8 1 

SCHILLER    AND    GOETHE    AS    BOHEMIANS  85 


6  CONTENTS. 

THE  YEAR'S  PROGRESS     .         .         .         .89 

SOME    REMARKS    ON   THE    SECRET    RELA- 
TIONS BETWEEN  CHEMISTRY  AND   POLIT- 
ICAL   ECONOMY          ....  95 

ETHNOLOGY      ......    IOI 

ON    COMMERCE     .....  IOy 

PREHISTORIC    RELICS  .  .  .  .Ill 

IRISH    HISTORY   .  .  .  .  .  I  IJ 

BOTANY  .  .  .  .  .  .119 

THE    AGE    OF    IRON          .  .  .  .125 

ANCIENT    BOHEMIANS  .  .  .  .129 

ON    TEMPERANCE  ....  135 

A    NEW    PHILOSOPHICAL    INSTRUMENT  .     141 

EDUCATIONAL    METHODS          .  .  .  145 

IMMORAL    PHILOSOPHY      .  .  .  •     ISI 

THE    BACHELOR    .  .  .  .  .157 

LOVE         .  .  .  .  .  .  .l6l 

THANKSGIVING    DAY     ....  169 

ON    TRUTH         .  .  .  .  .  .173 

LETTER  FROM  THE  BEAR  WHO  SWAM 
ACROSS  THE  GOLDEN  GATE  AND  LAND- 
ED AT  THE  PRESIDIO  .  .  .  179 


CONTENTS.  7 

THE    MICROSCOPE      .  .  .  .  .185 

IN    THE    NAME    OF    THE    PROPHET  .  19! 

THE    CHRISTMAS-TREE         .  .  .  -195 

YULE  ......  199 

IDEAL    BOHEMIA         .....    205 

ON    EVOLUTION    .  .  .  .  .  211 

ON    GERMS         .  .  .  .    '  .    215 

ADDRESS    TO    THE    MAYOR      .  .  .  219 

ON    FISHES         ......    221 

ON    BUTTERFLIES  ....  225 


ADDRESS     IN     RESPONSE     TO     THE 

INTRODUCTION    AT    THE 

BOHEMIAN    CLUB. 

WORSHIPFUL  SIRE:  I  stand  here  as  the 
representative  of  the  German  Pfeifen  Club, 
and  have  to  correct  a  slight  error  that  in- 
troduced itself  into  the  address  delivered 
by  your  Worship.  It  is  not  to  announce 
the  subjugation  of  the  Pfeifen  Club  that  I 
appear  before  you.  I  am  not  a  hostage;  I 
am  an  ambassador  of  a  kindred  organiza- 
tion. The  object  of  our  institutions  is  the 
same;  our  organizations  follow  a  parallel 
course.  The  object  of  both  is  charity.  Not 
that  charity  which  sends  ice-cream  to  the 
Greenlanders  and  skates  to  the  people  on 
the  sources  of  old  Nile;  no,  true  charity 
begins  at  home.  And  where  are  we  more 
at  home  than  inside  our  own  stomachs? 


10  THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

It  is,  therefore,  a  most  wonderful  coinci- 
dence that  both  organizations,  the  Bohe- 
mian as  well  as  the  Pfeifen  Club,  struck  the 
same  idea  of  international  charity.  Both 
found  the  solution  of  the  social  question  in 
an  alcoholic  solution. 

The  solution  tendered  to  me  by  your 
Worship  smells  very  nice,  and  I  pledge 
myself  in  it  to  my  Bohemian  friends. 

I  address  you  in  the  name  of  our  vener- 
able bird,  and  thus  he  speaks  to  you  through 
my  unworthy  mouth: 

"My  Sons :  I  am  pleased  to  see  the  ven- 
eration that  you  have  shown  to  me  on  so 
many  occasions.  Since  the  day  that  my 
patron,  Minerva,  was  born  out  of  the  head 
of  Jupiter,  which  circumstance  forever  will 
be  the  only  case  of  cerebral  pregnancy,  I 
always  had  a  longing  for  mental  enjoyment, 
and  I  thank  you,  my  sons,  for  all  the  exer- 
cises in  art,  literature,  pedro,  seven-up,  and 
other  sciences  which  I  have  witnessed  in 
the  old  club-rooms.  I  also  thank  you  for  all 
the  rats,  mice,  seagulls,  neck-pieces  of  beef, 


THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL.  II 

and  all  the  other  delicacies  of  which,  on  my 
behalf,  you  have  deprived  yourselves  so  un- 
selfishly. I  also  thank  you  for  the  good 
taste  you  have  shown  in  choosing  the  noc- 
turnal hours  for  your  celebrations,  for  I 
hate  matinees.  I  am  a  bird  of  prey  of  the 
sub-family  Nocturna,  that  differ  from  the 
vultures  by  the  strength  of  their  claws, 
from  the  eagles  and  hawks  by  the  compara- 
tive weakness  of  their  bills.  But  if  my  bill 
is  weak,  I  nevertheless  respect  large  bills 
and  admire  the  courage  that  meets  them. 
Owing  to  the  weakness  of  my  bill,  I  am  a 
bird  of  few  words;  as  the  immortal  poet 
Bromley  sings: 

u  c  There  was  an  owl  that  lived  in  an  oak, 
The  more  he  heard  the  less  he  spoke, 
The  less  he  spoke  the  more  he  heard. 
Oh,  let  us  be  like  this  wise  bird/ 

"  But  I  keep  my  watchful  eye  on  you 
every  night;  in  daytime  better  look  out  for 
yourselves.  Like  a  Haruspex  of  old,  I  have 
examined  with  prophetic  eye  all  the  neck- 
bones  of  beef  which  you  have  sacrificed  to 


12  THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

me,  and  I  see  before  you  a  bright  sphere  of 
success  and  progress. 

"  Being  a  bird  of  prey,  I  have  prayed  for 
you  all  the  time,  and  I  will  do  so  now  in  the 
words  of  Sanctus  Cremonius:  'May  the 
Lord  love  you  and  not  call  for  you  too 


soon.' 


VIRTUE. 

SOCRATES  used  to  say  that  everybody  was 
eloquent  enough  on  those  matters  which  he 
understood  thoroughly.  Now,  that's  ex- 
actly my  case  in  regard  to  virtue.  There  is 
no  object  in  this  wide  world  with  which  I 
am  so  intimately  connected  as  with  virtue. 
"  Be  virtuous  and  you  will  be  happy."  You 
have  all  frequently  listened  to  this  admo- 
nition, but  I  suspect  there  are  very  few 
among  those  present  that  have  subjected 
this  axiom  to  a  practical  trial.  I  have,  and 
I  am  here  to  give  you  the  benefit  of  my 
experience. 

In  my  peculiar  case,  the  admonition  to  be 
virtuous  and  happy  came  from  an  aunt  of 
mine.  But  as  this  contemplation  will  oc- 
cupy several  hours,  I  consider  it  proper  to 
divide  the  matter  and  look  at  the  subject  of 


14  THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

our  contemplation  under  three  different 
heads : 

First — My  aunt. 

Second — My  own  experience. 

Third  and  final  —  Conclusions  drawn 
from  my  aunt  and  good  advice  given  by 
myself. 

My  aunt  was  an  elderly  lady,  not  exactly 
prepossessing  in  her  exterior,  but  shocking- 
ly virtuous  and  as  unmarried  as  possible. 
Her  favorite  beverage  was  tea  of  valerian 
with  a  stick  in  it  of  sulphuric  ether.  She 
wore  green  spectacles,  always  felt  miserable 
and  respectable,  and  between  asafoetida  and 
valerian  led  a  most  unhappy  life.  Her  only 
occupation  was  virtue.  In  her  leisure  hours 
she  made  a  most  interesting  collection  of 
medicine-bottles  and  pill-boxes,  of  all  shapes 
and  sizes.  So  she  used  to  sit  near  the  peace- 
ful slope  of  her  favorite  pill-box,  looking 
through  her  green  spectacles  at  humanity 
as  it  passed  her  window,  and  talked  virtue 
and  gossip.  It  took  considerable  time  be- 
fore I  could  separate  the  idea  of  virtue  from 


THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL.  15 

that  of  green  glasses,  or  distinguish  the  odor 
of  sanctity  and  the  smell  of  a  drug-store; 
but  when  I  finally  succeeded  in  doing  so,  I 
made  up  my  mind  to  give  virtue  a  fair 
shake. 

Gentlemen,  I  have  practiced  several  vir- 
tues,— moderately,  of  course,  for  I  always 
was  of  temperate  habits, — but  somehow  or 
other  during  the  whole  time  of  my  experi- 
ments I  felt  dejected  and  miserable,  and  the 
happiest  moment  of  my  life  was  when  I 
dropped  virtue  altogether. 

Virtue  is  a  swindle.  I  have  seen  people 
ruined  by  one  single  virtue.  How  would 
they  have  fared  then  had  they  possessed  two, 
three,  or  more.  On  the  other  hand,  I  have 
a  friend,  a  dear  friend,  who  is  in  possession 
of  a  complete  and  well-arranged  collection 
of  all  those  vices  that  possibly  can  be  prac- 
ticed in  this  sublunary  world,  and  he  is 
happy,  he  is  successful,  he  is  at  peace  with 
himself  and  with  the  whole  world.  It  is 
true  I  know  there  are  instances  where  peo- 
ple have  been  ruined  by  vice;  but  in  such 


1 6  THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

cases  you  will  observe  they  always  have 
been  ruined  by  one  vice,  never  by  several  at 
the  same  time ;  and  so  it  is  evident  that  they 
were  not  ruined  by  that  one  vice,  but  by  the 
absence  of  all  others. 

Alas!  vice  is  no  more  what  it  was  when  I 
was  young.  Vice  is  growing  monotonous; 
there  is  not  enough  variety  in  it,  and  it  is  a 
most  melancholy  fact  that  since  Sir  Walter 
Raleigh  introduced  tobacco  no  new  vice 
has  been  invented.  The  inventor  of  a  new 
one  would  be  a  benefactor  to  humanity. 
Now,  here  is  an  object  worthy  of  the  accu- 
mulated energies  of  the  Bohemian  congre- 
gation. 

Let  us  invent  some  new  vice,  and  coming 
generations  will  bless  our  memory. 


ARCHEOLOGY. 

WHEN  I  received  the  order  of  our  most 
gracious  Sire  to  appear  before  him  at  the 
Christmas  High  Jinks  and  report  on  the 
progress  made  in  the  Archaeological  Sec- 
tion of  the  organization,  I  began  imme- 
diately my  investigations  by  borrowing 
books  from  all  libraries  that  had  not  yet 
had  any  sad  experiences  in  my  direction. 
The  message  of  our  most  gracious  Sire  met 
me  at  5  P.  M.,  at  the  exact  moment  when  my 
thirst  for  knowledge  transforms  itself  into  a 
thirst  for  something  else,  and  I  felt  highly 
honored,  but  at  the  same  time  at  a  loss  how 
to  respond  to  a  confidence  placed  in  me  on 
such  an  important  and  serious  matter. 

Modern  history  of  the  Bohemian  Club 
is  comparatively  well  known.  The  cele- 
brated historians,  Tommy  Newcomb  and 


1 8  THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

Colonel  Cremony,  the  Baron  Miinchhausen 
of  the  western  hemisphere,  have  preserved 
for  posterity  the  events  which  led  to  the 
formation  of  the  present  shape  of  this 
learned  and  moral  organization.  To  be 
better  understood,  when  I  have  to  dive  into 
the  dark  mysteries  of  post-tertiary  times 
and  previous  geological  periods,  I  am  to 
repeat  here  the  statements  of  Tommy  and 
his  friend  Colonel  Cremony,  both  of  them 
such  enthusiastic  lovers  of  truth  that  they 
kept  all  of  it  to  themselves. 

You  will  recollect  that  the  organization 
of  this  ancient  order  had  originally  the  ob- 
ject to  protect  the  genius  of  the  reporter 
against  the  want  of  appreciation  by  an  un- 
enlightened public,  as  well  as  the  narrow- 
minded  and  merely  mercenary  views  of  the 
newspaper-owners.  Originally  of  a  strictly 
literary  character,  the  club  soon  extended 
its  welcome  to  sculptors  and  painters,  be- 
cause they  strive  in  the  same  line — they  rep- 
resent things  which  are  no  realities,  exactly 
as  our  newspapers  palm  off  novelties  which 


THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL.  19 

are  no  facts  and  facts  which  are  no  novel- 
ties. Then  the  welcome  was  extended  for 
exactly  the  same  reason  to  lawyers  and  later 
to  musicians,  as  the  transitory  character  of 
their  productions  cannot  inflict  any  serious 
harm.  Finally  some  Front-Street  mil- 
lionaires obtained  admission  by  carefully 
concealing  the  real  amount  of  their  for- 
tunes. 

It  is  a  well-established  historical  fact  that 
the  Spartan  hero  Leonidas,  by  George 
Bromley  persistently  mistaken  for  General 
Barnes,  was  a  prominent  member  of  the 
organization.  Less  known  it  is  that  the 
greatest  physician  of  antiquity — Hippoc- 
rates— belonged  to  it.  The  order  always 
had  a  great  power  of  attraction  for  medical 
men.  It  was  during  the  last  years  of  the 
reign  of  Philip  of  Macedonia,  when  the 
medical  profession  was  suffering  from  an 
intensely  healthy  year;  in  fact,  it  was  an 
epidemic  of  health.  The  professors  of  the 
Polyclinics  of  Stagira  were  suffering  from 
starvation.  They  had  grown  so  thin  and 


20  THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

diminished  in  circumference  that  they 
could  no  more  fill  their  chairs.  Hippoc- 
rates awoke  to  the  emergency.  He  saw  it 
was  impossible  to  reproduce  the  necessary 
rotundity  to  fill  a  medical  chair  by  mere 
demonstrations  a  posteriori,  so  he  started  a 
new  medical  system,  chiefly  founded  on 
fees,  and  therefore  called  the  physiological 
system.  He  laid  great  stress  on  physiology, 
and  wound  up  every  lecture  with  the  admo- 
nition, "Be  very  particular  about  fees"; 
and  then  he  grew  excited,  stamped  his  feet, 
and  swore  an  oath,  which  ever  since  has 
been  called  "the  Hippocratic  oath,"  and 
which  each  of  the  medical  fraternity,  even 
our  most  gracious  Sire,  has  been  compelled 
to  swear.  This  oath  gives  us  power  over 
the  life  and  death  of  our  fellow-citizens. 

It  was  towards  the  end  of  the  Lias  forma- 
tion when  the  citizens  of  San  Francisco 
handed  in  a  petition  to  the  Legislature, 
meeting  just  then  at  Sacramento,  for  a  vol- 
cano. They  argued  that  if  an  effete  mon- 
archy like  Italy  can  raise  two  volcanoes, 


THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL.  21 

this  free  community  of  loyal,  hard-drinking 
taxpayers  is  at  least  entitled  to  one.  Black- 
stone,  who  was  then  a  member  of  the  Legis- 
lature, said  the  point  was  well  taken.  A 
committee  was  appointed,  an  appropriation 
raised,  and  Telegraph  Hill  selected  as 
a  center  for  the  newly  created  forces.  Un- 
fortunately, the  head  engineer,  who  very 
appropriately  had  been  selected  from 
amongst  the  most  practical  sailors  of  the 
Life-Saving  Station,  had  economized  with 
the  material  so  that  locally  he  only  pro- 
duced an  eruption  of  the  skin;  but  the  mis- 
calculated forces  caused  the  Second-Street 
cut  and  a  long  series  of  earthquakes,  which 
interfered  greatly  with  the  stability  of  the 
California  coast  line.  It  is  not  quite  cer- 
tain whether  it  was  Divine  Providence  or 
our  Board  of  Supervisors  that  restored  the 
stability  of  our  coast  line  by  placing  the 
powerful  Captain  Kenzel  on  it,  whose 
soothing  influence  quieted  the  disturbed 
nervous  system  of  Mother  Earth  and  kept 
it  in  its  position  ever  since.  However,  the 


22  THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

powerful  Captain  would  not  have  suc- 
ceeded if  he  had  not  found  assistance  in  a 
Board  of  Health  whose  weight  and  physi- 
cal proportions  had  grown  to  an  extent  that 
they  spoiled  a  North-Pole  expedition,  none 
of  the  scientific  staff  of  the  expedition  being 
able  to  pass  through  the  Behring  Straits. 

The  disturbance  of  the  post-tertiary  era 
finally  was  kept  down  by  our  Geological 
Survey;  a  few  ice-cream  saloons  on  Kearny 
Street  being  the  only  remainder  of  the  gla- 
cial period;  but  revolutionary  tendencies 
crept  into  society  because  society  had  wit- 
nessed so  many  violent  geological  disturb- 
ances and  was  infected  by  the  bad  example 
set  by  Nature  herself.  This  circumstance 
was  the  cause  that  the  powers  of  our  public 
officers  had  to  be  extended,  and  was  the  first 
step  to  the  development  of  the  present  des- 
potic government  of  the  Bohemian  Club, 
which,  although  benevolent,  is  very  power- 
ful. 

Our  present  Sire,  for  the  sake  of  his  phys- 
ical and  moral  beauty,  occupied  this  post 


THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL.  23 

of  honor  once  before;  so  he  is  not  only  his 
own  successor,  but  also  his  own  ancestor. 
By  this  circumstance  he  becomes  a  self- 
made  man,  and  as  such  is  the  first  instance 
of  a  self-made  man  in  the  ancient  dynasty 
that  rules  the  Bohemian  Club. 


POPULAR   SCIENCE. 

IT  is  one  of  the  greatest  blessings  of  this 
century  that  science  has  become  popular- 
ized. In  bygone  ages  science  was  the 
monopoly  of  a  caste.  The  most  important 
discoveries  were  kept  secret,  and,  as  a  nat- 
ural consequence  of  such  egotism,  the  pro- 
gress of  the  human  race  was  retarded. 
Champollion,  the  celebrated  scholar  of 
Egyptian  antiquity,  has  established  be- 
yond any  doubt  the  fact  that  the  ancient 
Egyptians  knew  the  corkscrew.  The  hiero- 
glyphic sign  heretofore  believed  to  rep- 
resent a  snake  is  in  fact  the  hieratic 
representation  of  a  corkscrew  slightly  out 
of  shape.  But  the  discovery  of  this  im- 
portant instrument  was  never  made  publicly 
known,  notwithstanding  the  extensive  use 


26  THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

of  it  at  the  celebration  of  their  religious 
mysteries. 

When  the  Caliph  Omar,  who  was  a  fan- 
atical W.  C.  T.  U.  man,  destroyed  the 
library  of  Alexandria  with  all  its  spiritual 
treasures,  the  key  to  all  the  spiritual  com- 
fort was  lost  with  them.  Centuries  have 
gone  by  and  a  great  amount  of  valuable 
time  has  been  lost  in  the  effort  to  open 
bottles  unscientifically  by  mere  brute  force. 
The  great  Euclides,  when  studying  the 
qualities  of  the  spiral  line,  did  not  strike  the 
idea  of  the  corkscrew,  and  it  was  not  until 
the  time  that  French  enterprise  perforated 
the  Isthmus  of  Suez  that  the  corkscrew  of 
the  ancients  was  rediscovered.  There  they 
found  the  venerable  antiquity  at  a  depth 
of  two  hundred  and  seventy-five  feet  below 
the  bottom  of  the  Red  Sea,  in  a  shaft 
perforating  the  metamorphic  formations  of 
the  surface,  on  a  stratum  of  brown  cake 
laterally  compressed  and  evidently  of  vol- 
canic origin. 

The  implement  bore   an   inscription   in 


THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL.  2J 

hieroglyphics,   of  which   I   here   give   the 
English  translation : 

To  MOSES, 

City  and  County  Assessor  of  Egypt. 
Dear  Baron: — We,  Pharaoh  I,  by  the 
grace  of  God,  King  of  Egypt,  send  you  this 
decoration  as  a  Christmas-box  and  a  token 
of  our  Royal  Grace. 
Egypt,  26th  December, 

in  the  year  before  Our  Lord   1500. 

From  this  moment  began  a  new  era  in  the 
history  of  man.  Discovery  followed  dis- 
covery. Steam-power,  the  telegraph,  the 
telephone,  and  the  great  Dr.  Pinchipinchi's 
celebrated  flea-powder  were  discovered  in 
rapid  succession,  and  are  at  present  the  in- 
alienable property  of  the  human  race.  For 
all  these  benefits,  of  course,  we  are  indebted 
to  our  learned  organizations,  the  Micro- 
scopic Society,  Bohemian  Club,  Academy 
of  Sciences,  the  Society  to  Promote  Cruelty 
of  Insects  to  Man,  but  at  the  same  time  to 
public  lecturers,  like  Artemus  Ward,  who 
expound  science  to  the  many  and  combine 


28  THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

the   utile  cum   dulci  scientific   abstraction 
with  the  sweet  strains  of  the  hand-organ. 

New  disciplines  of  science  will  crop  out 
of  such  combinations.  We  have  already  now 
forensic  medicine,  the  compound  of  medi- 
cine and  law,  but  we  will  soon  have  surgi- 
cal music,  obstetrical  aesthetics,  gynaecolog- 
ical astronomy,  and  other  new  disciplines 
which  will  prove  a  benefit  to  the  human 
race  and  consternation  to  the  schoolma'ams. 
But  the  consternation  of  schoolma'ams  is 
not  the  sole  object  of  modern  science,  whose 
concentrated  spirit  can  be  absorbed  only  by 
the  chosen  few;  science  has  to  be  diluted 
and  sweetened  by  music  in  the  same  fair 
proportions  as  other  mixed  drinks,  and  is 
then  called  "science  toddy." 


PROGRESS    IN   SCIENCE. 

I  AM  sorry,  but  I  am  unprepared.  For- 
tunately, I  have  in  my  pocket  a  paper 
which  I  intended  to  read  before  our  Acad- 
emy of  Sciences.  As  the  evening  is  rather 
advanced,  perhaps  you  will  be  kind  enough 
not  to  know  the  difference. 

The  paper  is  on  the  progress  that  has 
been  made  last  year  in  the  sciences.  The 
progress  of  unprofitable  science  and  useless 
investigation  has  been  unusually  rapid,  so 
that  it  is  impossible  to  enumerate  all  the 
benefits  which  the  human  race  has  received 
by  the  untiring  efforts  of  devoted  scientists. 

Let  us  begin  with  the  heavens — Astron- 
omy. A  great  astronomer  has  discovered  in 
the  rings  of  Saturn  an  inscription  which  in 
a  careful  translation  reads:  "Commit  no 
nuisance";  from  which  inscription  the 


30  THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

learned  professor  justly  concludes  that  the 
population  of  the  remote  region  has  arrived 
at  a  state  of  civilization  analogous  to  our 
own. 

In  zoology  the  distinguishing  character- 
istics between  the  green  turtle,  the  mock 
turtle,  and  the  mocking-bird  have  been  so 
well  established  that  henceforth  the  mis- 
take of  putting  a  green  turtle  in  a  cage  and 
expecting  him  to  sing  will  not  happen  any 
more. 

In  regard  to  eulogies  and  necrologies  for 
dead  scientists,  a  marked  improvement  has 
been  established.  These  eulogies  are  now- 
adays written  during  the  lifetime  of  the 
dead  scientist  and  the  composition  is  super- 
intended by  himself.  This  circumstance 
will  serve  as  another  proof  of  the  immor- 
tality of  the  soul,  because  the  most  con- 
firmed infidel  will  say  to  himself:  "If  that 
fellow  is  made  immortal  during  his  life- 
time, why  shall  I  not  be  so  after  my  death?" 

You  all  know  that  moral  philosophy  is 
my  specialty,  but  it  is  only  a  short  time  ago 


THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL.  31 

that  the  real  utility  of  lectures  on  moral 
philosophy  has  been  established.  It  is  my 
own  discovery  that  lectures  of  this  kind 
produce  water;  of  course,  not  of  a  superior 
quality,  but  good  enough  for  irrigation. 
Vegetation  in  its  perverted  taste  and  fanati- 
cal rejection  of  fermented  liquors  does  not 
deserve  any  better  fluid;  and  so,  my  dear 
brethren,  let  us  be  thankful  that  we,  accord- 
ing to  our  principle  of  strict  intemperance, 
do  not  depend  on  irrigation  by  moral  phil- 
osophy. 


MUSIC. 

WE  have  been  touched  frequently  to  our 
very  hearts  in  these  rooms  by  the  musical 
performances  of  our  musical  brethren.  Fre- 
quently, roused  by  the  strains  of  music,  the 
tears  have  rushed  to  our  eyes.  Do  you  think 
that  heaven,  which  is  so  far  above,  is  less 
sensitive  to  the  charm  than  we  poor  mor- 
tals? Of  course,  the  quiet  quartet  of  the 
amateurs  or  the  soprano  in  the  boudoir 
cannot  much  influence  our  California  sky. 
This  influence  begins  with  the  solitary  flute 
accompanying  the  heartrending  wails  of  a 
rat  terrier  addressing  the  moon;  it  gains 
power  with  the  performance  of  the  wild 
Italian  organgrinder,  and  attains  its  maxi- 
mum with  the  brass  band  that  leads  the  bold 
militia  warrior  to  glory  and  the  destruction 
of  sandwiches  and  whisky. 


34  THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

I  recollect  a  body  of  heroes  wearing  rain- 
bows instead  of  regimentals  and  having 
painted  on  their  knapsacks  the  head  of  a 
tiger  in  an  attitude  as  if  his  teeth  were  in- 
spected by  a  dentist.  By  the  first  notes  of 
their  brass  band  the  azure  of  our  California 
sky  turned  into  a  delicate  apple-green,  and 
it  began  to  rain.  Half  an  hour  later  we 
received  a  telegram  that  Sacramento  was 
under  water.  Another  deluge  —  and  the 
destruction  of  the  world — was  prevented  by 
stopping  the  music. 

You  may  call  that  a  coincidence,  but  in 
this  wide  world  there  is  not  room  for  a 
single  coincidence ;  everything  is  immutable 
law,  the  whole  universe  a  network  of  cause 
and  effect.  You  may  sing  and  say  we  met 
by  chance,  but  in  reality  we  did  not  meet  by 
chance,  but  compelled  by  the  Darwinian 
law  of  natural  selection.  The  spheroid 
shape  of  this  planet  is  the  cause  that  we 
wear  off  our  boots  on  one  side,  by  frequently 
walking  too  much  in  one  direction.  Why 
are  the  days  longer  in  summer  than  in 


THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL.  3$ 

winter?  It  is  the  consequence  of  the  caloric 
law;  they  are  expanded  by  the  heat  in  sum- 
mer and  contracted  by  the  cold  in  winter. 

I  had  a  friend,  a  dear  friend  in  Australia, 
who  never  could  go  shooting  without  being 
caught  in  a  thunderstorm.  The  Australian 
Legislature,  ever  attentive  to  the  agricultu- 
ral interests  of  the  country,  appointed  him 
Inspector  of  Thunderstorms.  Five  months 
afterwards  he  was  killed  by  lightning.  Why 
have  we  not  a  similar  institution?  It  would 
be  a  blessing  for  this  country  if  every  five 
months  a  legislator  was  killed  by  lightning, 
like  that  old  Roman  king  and  legislator, 
Numa  Pompilius,  who  must  not  be  mis- 
taken for  Paul  Neumann,  whom  I  have 
known  as  a  legislator,  but  who  is  no  king, 
and,  I  am  happy  to  say,  is  not  yet  killed  by 
lightning. 


CALIFORNIA. 

I  DIVIDE  the  existence  of  California  into 
two  periods:  the  first,  before  the  foundation 
of  the  Bohemian  Club,  has  to  be  considered 
as  prehistoric.  Even  this  period  is  distin- 
guished by  a  very  peculiar  character,  grad- 
ually changing  to  three  different  stages  or 
grades,  which  I  am  to  illustrate  by  three 
different  experiences. 

I  was  but  a  few  days  in  San  Francisco 
when  a  rough-looking  individual — a  Texas 
Ranger,  as  I  afterwards  heard — laid  his 
hand  on  my  shoulder,  with  the  words,  "  Old 
horse,  take  a  drink?"  I  had  presence  of 
mind  enough  to  take  the  drink,  and  had 
afterwards  several  opportunities  to  get  even 
with  the  gentleman  in  taking  drinks  as  well 
as  in  calling  him  "old  horse." 

The  second  experience  was  on  the  day 


38  THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

when  the  Territory  of  California  was  ad- 
mitted as  a  State.  A  procession  was  formed, 
in  which  I  participated  at  the  side  of  a 
gentleman  to  whom  I  was  not  introduced. 
Silently  we  walked  on,  influenced  and  ab- 
sorbed by  the  significance  of  the  historical 
moment,  when  my  companion  abruptly  re- 
marked: "It's  a  long  time  that  I  have  not 
seen  you."  I  was  astonished  and  answered : 
"I  never  saw  you  all  my  lifetime."  "And 
is  not  that  long  enough?"  retorted  my  com- 
panion in  the  most  mellifluous  accents  of 
green  Erin.  That  day  we  got  very  much 
acquainted. 

The  third  experience  was  in  the  rooms 
of  the  Vigilance  Committee,  where  we  dis- 
cussed the  case  of  Mr.  Stuart.  The  meeting 
was  addressed  by  Jim  Dows,  and  I  recollect 
distinctly  the  words :  "Gentlemen,  to  hang 
a  man  is  a  temporary  and  transitory  matter, 
but  the  principles  which  we  represent  here 
are  eternal." 

After  these  experiences  I  considered  my- 
self sufficiently  acclimatized.  I  became  a 


THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL.  39 

citizen  and  fervent  admirer  of  Squibob, 
whose  untimely  end  I  have  regretted  for 
years,  until,  being  introduced  into  the  Bo- 
hemian Club  by  Mr.  Bowman  and  Tommy 
Newcomb,  I  discovered  the  place  where 
Squibob's  ghost  is  still  walking. 

My  Bohemian  friends,  the  fight  for  exist- 
ence has  not  always  been  to  me  an  easy 
matter.  We  all  have  had  times  when  care 
for  material  things  overpowered  us,  when 
we  became  disgusted  by  unprovoked  jeal- 
ousies. When  those  cares  of  the  outer  mate- 
rial world  became  discouraging  I  withdrew 
to  ideal  Bohemia.  But  Bohemia  was  not 
only  to  me  an  asylum  against  material  cares ; 
it  was  also  a  shrine  consecrated  to  literature, 
from  where  new  vistas  opened  into  the 
realms  of  the  bold,  original  American  humor, 
so  well  represented  inside  these  walls,  and 
outside  by  men  like  Mark  Twain,  Bill  Nye, 
and  many  others  of  world-wide  fame.  I 
received  here  new  conceptions  of  many 
things;  and  if  I  count  a  few  triumphs  in 
literature,  I  owe  them  to  Bohemian  conver- 


40  THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

sations,   to  ideas  which   I   imbibed    (with 
other  things)  in  the  halls  of  this  institution. 


THE    SKELETON   IN   ARMOR. 

I  ALWAYS  was  touched  to  my  very  heart 
by  the  beautiful  lines  written  by  Longfel- 
low on  "  The  Skeleton  in  Armor."  I  felt  a 
burning  desire  to  know  more  about  the 
skeleton.  I  began  to  study  the  Iceland  Ed- 
das,  the  Saemundur,  and  the  Snorri  Sturle- 
son  Edda,  the  most  ancient  numbers  of  the 
Jolly  Giant,  and  other  reliable  documents 
of  history.  In  the  course  of  this  reading  I 
succeeded  in  diverting  the  subject  from  all 
romance  and  establishing  the  following  his- 
torical facts. 

Many  thousand  years  ago,  when  the 
giant  elk  was  not  fossil,  but  trod  in  flesh 
and  blood  the  mossy  bogs  of  ancient  Ire- 
land, when  the  mastodon  and  the  rhinoceros 
tichorrhinus  roamed  through  the  majestic 
primeval  forests  of  sauerkraut  that  then 


42  THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

covered  all  northern  Europe,  there,  on  a 
beautiful  site,  embellished  by  a  meridian 
cutting  the  coast  line  of  the  Baltic,  lived  a 
pious  knight  named  Hans  Meyer.  Like  all 
the  knights  of  the  period,  Hans  Meyer  was 
in  love,  and,  according  to  the  enthusiastic 
custom  of  the  country,  killed  off  all  the  dear 
relations  of  his  lady  love.  By  an  unaccount- 
able neglect  he  omitted  to  kill  his  mother- 
in-law,  and  this  proved  to  be  the  beginning 
of  a  long  series  of  misfortunes. 

The  Baltic  hero  grew  restless.  He 
wanted  to  travel  far  away  from  his  home 
into  distant  climes  where  there  were  no 
mothers-in-law.  He  wanted  to  emigrate 
and  settle  in  the  East  Indies,  where  a  wise 
law  ordered  widows  to  be  burned,  and  deci- 
mated in  this  judicious  way  the  contingent 
of  elderly  ladies.  The  simple-minded  but 
thoughtful  hero  foresaw  that  he  might  go 
around  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope,  or  cross 
the  Isthmus  of  Suez  with  the  India  mail. 
Either  way  he  would  most  necessarily  want 
funds.  To  obtain  them,  he  imitated  the 


THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL.  43 

signatures  of  wealthy  fellow-citizens.  But 
as  this  style  of  calligraphics  was  not  consid- 
ered lawful,  he  was  sentenced  to  prison  for 
life;  that  is,  according  to  the  rules  of  the 
mild  patriarchal  government  of  the  region, 
he  was  allowed  for  several  months  inside 
of  a  penitentiary,  to  study  the  charmingly 
adapted  architecture  of  the  place,  and  then 
was  put  on  board  of  a  vessel  bound  for 
America,  under  the  conditions  never  to 
return  and  to  adopt  the  name  of  Pilgrim 
Father. 

It  was  then  the  custom  that  no  foreigner 
whatever  was  admitted  on  American  soil 
without  his  accepting  an  office.  No  sooner 
heard  the  first  of  the  Mohicans,  who  was 
then  the  President  of  the  United  States,  of 
the  arrival  of  another  cargo  of  distinguished 
foreigners,  than  he  asked  the  favor  of  a 
private  interview  with  Hans  Meyer.  Hans 
Meyer  found  the  first  of  the  Mohicans  bus- 
ily employed  smoking  his  calumet  filled 
with  Amiga s  prim  era  calidad,  calle  de 
Obispo. 


44  THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

"Hans  Meyer,"  said  the  first  of  the  Mo- 
hicans, "glad  to  make  your  acquaintance. 
You  see,  this  government  is  a  philanthropic 
experiment.  We  want  to  make  everybody 
fit  to  fill  every  office,  and  for  that  reason  we 
appoint  for  each  office  the  man  who  is  least 
adapted,  for  his  mind  and  capacities  are 
most  in  need  of  being  developed  in  that  very 
direction.  There  is,  viz.,  Flanagan,  a  mild 
Celt  and  an  enthusiastic  admirer  of  law 
and  order.  We  make  him  Chief  of  Police. 
There  is  the  tribe  Levy,  with  its  time- 
honored  reputation  for  honesty.  We  never 
elect  a  City  and  County  Assessor  but  his 
Christian  name  is  Levy.  In  former  times 
we  used  to  fill  the  office  of  Coroner  by  some 
undertaker,  but  since  we  discovered  that 
these  people  really  understand  something 
about  that  business  we  take  a  doctor.  Now, 
my  friend,  the  circumstance  of  your  being 
an  unsophisticated  Northern  barbarian 
without  any  education  would  admirably 
adapt  you  for  the  office  of  Superintendent 
of  Public  Education;  but  some  fellow  pas- 


THE    HOOT    OF    THE  OWL.  45 

sengers  of  yours  have  stated  that  you  know 
some  Latin;  that,  of  course,  disqualifies  you 
forever.  Now,  I  will  tell  you  what  I  can  do. 
I  will  create  a  new  office  for  your  sake  and 
make  you  Inspector  of  Mothers-in-law." 

Hearing  this,  Hans  Meyer  grew  pale, 
went  to  the  next  blacksmith  and  ordered  a 
dress  coat,  borrowed  from  a  tinman  a  stove- 
pipe and  a  pair  of  gloves,  took  a  drink,  and 
had  a  building  erected  on  the  same  thought- 
ful style  of  architecture  that  he  had  studied 
during  his  stay  at  the  Baltic  penitentiary, 
and  disappeared  from  the  sight  of  man. 
After  some  weeks  his  friends  entered  the 
house  and  found  Hans  Meyer  stark  dead, 
in  full  armor,  leaning  against  a  corner. 
Some  said  he  died  by  an  abscess  of  the  liver, 
others  by  brandy  and  water  on  the  brain. 
Some  contended  that  during  his  sleep  rattle- 
snakes crept  into  his  boots.  The  Coroner 
pronounced  it  a  womb  complaint,  called  af- 
fection of  the  mother-in-law. 

His  friends  passed  eleven  resolutions,  be- 
ginning with,  "Whereas,  it  has  pleased  Di- 


46  THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

vine  Providence  in  its  inscrutable  wisdom," 
and  the  jury  gave  the  verdict:  "Killed  by 
the  inscrutable  wisdom  of  Providence." 


DARWINISM. 

ON  a  former  occasion  our  most  gracious 
Sire  has  proved  the  descent  of  the  human 
race  from  above;  he  has  defeated  the  pre- 
vailing notion  of  our  descent  from  the  mon- 
key, a  theory  which  found  its  chief  support 
in  the  homoeopathic  maxim,  Simla  simili- 
bus.  He  has  proved,  not  only  theoretically, 
but  also  practically,  with  imminent  peril  of 
his  life,  the  descent  from  the  balloon. 

One  day  when  I  was  in  these  rooms,  at  an 
early  hour,  when  all  good  Bohemians  were 
embraced  by  the  arms  of  Morpheus  or  were 
embracing  somebody  else,  I  was  wrapt 
in  a  brown  study  about  Darwinism.  My 
state  of  mind  was  caused  by  a  conversation 
with  our  brother  Harry  Edwards  on  a  pre- 
vious day,  which  resulted  in  a  slight  head- 
ache. I  was  absorbed  in  the  contemplation 


48  THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

of  some  luminous  phenomena  and  black  dots 
before  my  eyes,  spectral  illusions,  to  which 
I  am  much  subjected  on  lonely  mornings, 
and  which,  perhaps,  are  the  ghosts  of  the 
insects  killed  by  me  in  the  early  days  of 
California,  when  suddenly  my  attention  was 
attracted  to  the  cage  of  our  sacred  bird,  the 
Owl.  This  at  least  was  no  spectral  illusion ; 
there  was  a  letter  directed  to  me,  the  same 
which  I  hold  here  in  my  hand.  I  think  I 
can  excuse  the  indiscretion  of  divulging  the 
communication  made  to  me  by  the  Owl,  be- 
cause it  seemed  to  me  as  if  the  father  wishes 
its  publication.  It  is  as  follows: 

"SAN  FRANCISCO,  Dec.  29,  1874. 

"DEAR  SIR: 

"Before  I  addressed  these  lines  to  you  I 
hesitated  to  choose  between  you  and  Rev. 
Bromley,  whose  nocturnal  habits  and  per- 
sonal appearance  are  so  much  like  my  own ; 
but,  remembering  the  great  consideration 
which  you  always  have  shown  me  by 
showing  homage  to  me  in  entering  and 


THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL.  49 

leaving  the  room,  I  consider  you  the  most 
worthy  for  the  reception  of  my  confidence 
in  regard  to  my  ideas  on  Darwinism. 

"Before  entering  into  particulars,  I  must 
state  that  Darwin's  idea  of  progressive  de- 
velopment is  entirely  wrong.  This  world 
has  proved  a  failure  from  its  very  begin- 
ning. The  tops  of  the  mountains  are 
washed  down  and  fill  the  lakes  and  seas, 
causing  trouble  and  confusion  on  all  sides. 
The  sewerage  of  the  planet  is  bad  every- 
where, and  the  whole  universe  a  system  of 
blunders,  a  consolidated  mass,  the  product 
of  a  long  series  of  incompetent  engineering 
of  antediluvian  Superintendents  of  Streets. 
The  grade  has  been  so  continuously  changed 
that  you  cannot  find  an  alpine  height  with- 
out oyster-shells,  sardine-boxes,  and  other 
marine  productions,  which  prove  the  local- 
ity to  have  been  originally  the  bottom  of 
the  sea;  on  the  other  hand,  what  is  now  the 
bottom  of  the  sea  is  covered  by  a  post- 
tertiary  stratum  of  umbrellas,  peanut-shells, 
and  broken  bottles,  a  proof  of  its  having 


50  THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

been  but  a  short  time  ago  a  popular  picnic- 
ground  for  Sunday  excursions.  These 
changes  of  grade  took  place  chiefly  to  get 
a  job  for  the  numerous  street  contractors,  by 
whom,  at  that  period,  this  planet  was 
mainly  inhabited.  The  constant  rotation  of 
the  planetary  system  prevented  all  investi- 
gation, and  it  was  impossible  to  locate  the 
blunders  and  mistakes  and  make  individ- 
uals responsible,  as  everybody  promptly 
blamed  his  predecessor.  Mr.  Post-tertiary 
blamed  Mr.  Jurassic;  Mr.  Jurassic,  Mr. 
Lias;  Mr.  Lias  says  it  is  the  fault  of  Mr. 
Eocene;  Mr.  Eocene  says  it  is  the  fault  of 
Sabbath-breaking  and  a  bad  kind  of  whisky. 
"One  of  the  most  striking  failures  in  cre- 
ation is  man,  who  is  nearly  as  mean  as  a 
deadly  enemy  of  my  race,  the  crow,  who 
persists  in  persecuting  me  whenever  I  ap- 
pear in  daylight,  and  flies  at  me  and  calls 
me  names.  Just  so  mankind.  Like  the 
crow,  he  uses  unfair  means  and  has  obtained 
by  them  a  position  for  which  nature  has 
never  intended  him.  He  is  an  usurper,  a 


THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL.  51 

pretender.  The  idea  of  his  innate  supe- 
riority is  quite  ridiculous.  Look  at  his 
jaws.  How  insignificant  they  are  compared 
to  those  of  the  sea-lion.  He  has  no  claws, 
he  has  no  bill,  and  when  he  gets  a  bill  he 
leaves  it  unsettled. 

"The  only  instance  of  a  progressive  being 
on  this  planet  is  the  owl. 

"The  human  race  is  fast  degenerating. 
Look  at  the  descendant  of  a  Northern  sea- 
king  selling  liquor  as  an  Angular  Saxon  at 
a  corner  grocery.  Look  at  the  descendants 
of  Milesian  kings  drinking  it  on  credit. 

"The  cultus  of  the  ancient  Aztec,  with  its 
impressive  ceremonies  of  human  sacrifices, 
has  degenerated  into  the  early  piety  of  the 
Young  Men's  Christian  Association.  Com- 
pare the  High  Priest  Huichtlipochtli, 
wielding  in  his  right  hand  the  sacred  flint 
and  in  his  left  a  bleeding,  palpitating  heart, 
to  the  Young  Men  Christian  Deacon,  with 
bald  head,  blue  eye-glasses,  a  set  of  false 
teeth,  and  an  umbrella  instead  of  the  sacri- 
ficial flint  knife. 


52  THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

"As  to  natural  selection,  the  idea  is  simply 
preposterous.  It  is  true  that  we  owls  some- 
times select  our  own  kind  for  food,  but  there 
ends  the  working  of  that  principle.  Is  it 
natural  that  on  the  top  of  the  dentist  you 
always  find  a  photographer,  above  the 
undertaker  a  dancing-school?  Or,  explain 
why  all  your  friends  are  more  or  less  given 
to  drinking. 

"Yours  truly, 

"THE  OWL." 


THE    MOSQUITO. 

MOST  GRACIOUS  SlRE:  The  letter  with 
which  you  have  honored  me  has  been  to  me 
a  source  of  great  anxiety,  in  consequence  of 
its  most  original  style  of  calligraphics. 
Brother  Bromley,  who  always  has  been  my 
adviser  in  spiritual  things,  but  whom  I  am 
also  in  the  habit  of  consulting  in  important 
worldly  matters,  took  your  kind  letter  in 
his  hands  and,  after  having  turned  it  from 
side  to  side,  addressed  me  with  the  follow- 
ing words: 

"My  young  friend,  this  is  a  Chinese 
letter,  and  as  Chinese  is  not  written  in  lines, 
but  in  columns,  you  ought  to  have  held  it 
this  way,  and  you  easily  would  have  found 
that  it  is  a  bill  for  washing  and  ironing. 
When  I  represented  my  country  in  Tien 
Tsin,  I  received  every  week  a  document  of 


54  THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

similar  character;  in  fact,  it  was  the  only 
official  correspondence  I  indulged  in  dur- 
ing my  stay  at  Tien  Tsin.  You  see  here 
Hong  Kong  Shanghai  Peking  Ironing 
Washington,  and  here  in  the  corner  is  the 
receipt  of  the  bill,  'You  tarn  fool,'  which 
means,  payment  received,  and  is  also  the 
polite  style  by  which  foreigners  are  ad- 
dressed in  Tien  Tsin." 

This  explanation  did  not  satisfy  me,  so  I 
interviewed  Mr.  Marshall,  who  has  lent  me 
several  times  valuable  assistance  in  deciph- 
ering letters  of  Charley  Stoddard  and  other 
Aztec  hieroglyphs. 

"That  lets  me  out,"  he  said.  "The  only 
advice  I  can  give  you  is,  apply  to  Charley 
Stoddard;  he  is  the  highest  authority  in  this 
style  of  calligraphics." 

I  sent  the  letter  to  Charley  and  promptly 
received  this  answer: 

"Yes,  I  recognize  my  own  handwriting; 
but  you  know  very  well  that  I  cannot  read 
any  of  my  manuscripts  older  than  twelve 
months." 


THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL.  55 

Then  I  did  show  the  letter  to  Dan  O'Con- 
nell,  who  read  to  me  fluently  an  advertise- 
ment of  a  professor  to  teach  waltzing  in 
three  lessons.  "  Some  unknown  friend,"  he 
explained,  "has  heard  about  your  affliction 
by  gout  and  recommends  you  this  new 


cure." 


Now  I  have  tried  the  cure,  took  the  three 
lessons,  but,  as  you  see,  without  the  desired 
effect.  Nevertheless,  I  am  confident  I 
would  have  been  cured  if  I  only  had  learned 
to  waltz.  Finally,  thrown  on  my  own  re- 
sources, I  succeeded  in  rinding  out,— 

1.  That   the    document   was   written   in 
English; 

2.  That  it  referred  to  the  High  Jinks  of 
the  Bohemian  Club; 

3.  That   it    referred    to    something    else 
whose   nature  was   doubtful.     The   some- 
thing read  sometimes  like  dry  goods,  other 
times  more  like  mosquitoes. 

The  latter  version  appeared  to  me  the 
more  probable,  being  the  more  appropriate 
one  for  a  student  of  entomology.  Neverthe- 


56  THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

less,  it  appeared  to  me  the  safest  plan  to 
combine  the  two  versions  into  one,  and  so, 
by  joining  the  mosquito  to  dry  goods,  I  ob- 
tained the  mosquito  bar,  a  liquid  body, 
which  I  used  to  take  in  Sacramento  before 
going  to  sleep.  This  substance,  it  is  true, 
would  not  protect  me  against  the  sting  of 
the  mosquito;  but,  when  taken  in  sufficient 
quantity,  would  prevent  my  feeling  the 
stings — in  a  similar  way  as  Tommy  New- 
comb  cured  temporarily  a  toothache.  It 
was  in  the  old  rooms  of  the  Club,  where  one 
evening  he  was  suffering,  complaining,  and 
expressing  his  firm  intention  to  get  drunk. 
Now,  if  Tommy  had  taken  that  vow,  I  do 
not  know  a  single  instance  of  his  not  being 
true  to  his  word;  so  he  succeeded  very  well 
that  night,  and  when  I  met  him  the  follow- 
ing day  at  luncheon  with  a  swollen  face,  I 
was  afraid  that  the  cure  had  not  taken 
effect;  but  he  assured  me  the  remedy  was 
infallible,  and  added:  "The  whole  night  I 
had  the  most  excruciating  toothache,  but 
did  n't  feel  it  because  I  was  drunk." 


THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL.  57 

The  mosquito  (Tipula  pipiens)  belongs 
to  the  class  of  Diptera,  which  class  easily 
can  be  distinguished  from  the  rest  of  insects 
by  its  species  having  one  pair  of  wings  and 
three  pairs  of  legs.  Angels  also  have  a  pair 
of  wings,  but  the  mosquito  has  the  advan- 
tage in  the  number  of  legs.  Nevertheless, 
most  people  prefer  an  angel  with  a  single 
pair  of  well-developed  legs,  even  if  the 
wings  should  be  wanting,  to  all  the  six 
legs  of  the  mosquito.  Also,  they  prefer 
her  kiss  to  the  kiss  of  the  mosquito.  The 
jaws  of  the  mosquito  are  so  constructed  that 
he  cannot  chew,  only  kiss.  But  he  makes 
up  for  the  weakness  of  his  jaws  by  plenty 
of  cheek. 

In  his  larval  state  he  lives  in  the  water  and 
is  strictly  temperate.  During  his  aquatic 
larval  state  he  breathes  atmospheric  air  by  a 
pair  of  tubes  at  his  anal  end.  This,  of 
course,  necessitates  his  coming  at  stated 
times  to  the  surface  of  the  water  and  sticking 
out  his  anal  end  with  the  respiring  tubes 
and  disrespect  of  surroundings,  which 


58  THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

movement  is  very  improper.  But  Nature 
sometimes  is  very  improper,  and  I  have  fre- 
quently to  blush  for  her.  Now,  this  anal 
end  is  analogous  to  the  lower  end  of  the 
spinal  column  of  our  own  species,  which  in 
our  own  larval  state  is  used  for  educational 
purposes,  but  never  for  respiration;  and,  I 
am  happy  to  say,  is  not  ornamented  with  a 
pair  of  tubes  sticking  out  as  in  the  mos- 
quito larva,  because  these  tubes  would  in- 
terfere with  the  present  style  of  our  dress, 
and  would  even  prove  a  serious  obstacle  to 
our  sitting  down. 

The  moment  the  mosquito  emerges  from 
its  chrysalis  in  the  water  he  does  not  touch 
water  again.  He  spreads  his  wings  and 
looks  for  a  mate.  He  can  as  little  compre- 
hend the  associations  of  his  larval  state  as  we 
can  comprehend  the  illusions  of  our  first 
love.  The  male  mosquito  henceforth  has 
for  its  only  object  to  kiss  the  mosquita,  but 
the  mosquita  in  her  turn  is  very  liberal  in 
her  kisses.  She  kisses  promiscuously;  but, 
although  having  a  pair  of  wings,  her  kisses 


THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL.  59 

are  not  those  of  an  angel,  and  she,  there- 
fore, frequently  comes  to  grief.  The  male 
mosquito  only  lives  to  kiss,  but  the  female 
frequently  dies  for  it. 

There  is  a  peculiar  propensity,  a  kind  of 
suicidal  mania,  in  the  whole  class  of  dipter- 
ous insects.  The  housefly,  for  instance,  re- 
peats suicide  so  frequently  that  with  her  it 
becomes  a  habit.  It  is  the  prerogative  of 
the  fly  to  cultivate  suicide  as  a  vice.  I  once 
marked  a  fly  by  tying  a  knot  in  her  left 
middle  leg  and  found  the  same  individual 
next  morning  drowning  in  my  eye-opener, 
then  in  my  coffee,  then  in  my  lunch  cocktail, 
then  in  my  appetizer.  In  my  pousse  cafe 
I  saw  two  of  her,  and  when  I  took  my 
nightcap  I  did  not  pay  any  more  attention 
to  her. 

The  mosquito  does  not  commit  suicide  by 
drowning,  because  he  hates  water  and  is 
ashamed  of  his  larval  existence,  breathing 
through  anal  tubes  and  feeding  on  animal- 
culae  not  belonging  to  him,  but  to  another 
class;  as  some  specimens  of  our  own  spe- 


60  THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

cies  are  ashamed  of  their  juvenile  depreda- 
tions in  garden  and  fields,  belonging,  who 
cares  to  whom,  and  of  the  educational  ac- 
tion of  the  rattan  on  the  lower  end  of  their 
spinal  column. 

Now,  if  we  compare  the  diet  of  mosquito 
larva  and  his  mode  of  respiration  to  our  own 
style  of  living  this  night,  ought  we  not  to 
be  thankful? 


ON    MEDICINE. 

THE  science  of  medicine  is  the  science 
which  enables  the  student  to  pass  his  med- 
ical examination.  The  object  of  this  sci- 
ence is  to  keep  out  of  the  dominion  of  the 
News  Letter,  and  if  this  end  has  been 
obtained  we  call  it  the  triumph  of  science. 

Medicine  branches  off  into  two  disci- 
plines, which  are  called  the  old  system  and 
modern  science.  The  followers  of  the 
latter  call  the  followers  of  the  first  "old 
fogies";  the  followers  of  the  former  call 
the  adherers  of  modern  science  "  young 
men."  The  oldest  system  was  that  of  the 
Haruspices  in  ancient  Rome.  They  exam- 
ined the  bowels  of  oxen  with  the  naked  eye 
and  predicted  out  of  them  what  would  hap- 
pen. Modern  science  examines  the  bowels 
of  fools  with  the  microscope  and  predicts 


62  THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

what  has  happened.  Both  disciplines  agree 
on  one  point:  they  collect  fees,  or  at  least 
try  to  collect  them.  This  is  a  very  essential 
part  of  our  science,  and  the  discipline 
that  treats  about  collecting  fees  is  called 
physiology. 

There  are  many  other  branches  of  medi- 
cal science,  but  still  there  are  not  enough. 
We  have  forensic  medicine,  and  our  most 
gracious  Sire  has  created  a  new  science  by 
proclaiming  Dr.  Leach  doctor  of  surgical 
music.  But  we  want  a  doctor  of  obstetrical 
aesthetics.  There  is  a  secret  but  intimate 
connection  between  these  two  apparently 
so  different  branches  of  human  knowledge, 
and  the  connecting  link  is  woman,  or,  as  we 
scientists  say,  "female  mankind."  It  is  a 
fact  already  observed  by  the  ancients  that 
as  soon  as  ladies  approach  a  certain  age  they 
begin  to  develop  in  their  meetings  the  most 
lively  interest  for  medical  matters  and  med- 
ical men.  We  medical  men  feel  frequently 
the  powerful  influences  exercised  in  their 
secret  tribunals,  called  lunch  parties,  where 


THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL.  63 

they  make  and  unmake  medical  reputations. 
Now,  we  think  it  a  delicate  compliment, 
and  well  calculated  to  appease  the  wrath 
of  the  goddesses,  by  creating  for  their 
honor  a  new  discipline,  called  "obstetrical 
aesthetics. " 


HEROIC    DEEDS    OF   OLD    BOHEMIA. 

MOST  WORTHY  SIRE:  You  will  excuse 
my  gray  suit  on  an  evening  like  this.  I 
wear  it  partly  because  it  agrees  best  with 
my  complexion,  which  is  also  old  and  gray, 
and  partly  because  it  is  appropriate  to  the 
remarks  I  have  to  make  on  bygone  days — 
gray  antiquity  and  the  heroic  deeds  of  old 
Bohemia.  These  remarks  are  not  entirely 
prehistoric;  if  they  were,  they  would  be  out 
of  time,  instead  of  their  being  at  present 
only  out  of  place. 

I  am  myself  a  kind  of  Bohemian  fossil, 
and  there  are  moments  in  which  I  consider 
myself  an  honorary  member  of  the  Lias 
formation.  I  can  sympathize  with  the 
plesiosaurus  of  the  Ward  collection,  of 
which  a  specimen  is  kept  at  our  Academy 
of  Sciences,  which  the  Creator  himself 


66  THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

never  had  dared  to  imitate.  But  we  will  not 
enter  on  this  night  into  the  dark  mysteries 
of  a  Bohemian  Lias  formation.  Let  us 
become  post-tertiary  and  remember  the  an- 
cestral heroes  that  preceded  the  present  gen- 
eration. 

There  is,  one  of  the  first,  the  learned  and 
energetic  Caxton,  alias  Rhodes,  the  discov- 
erer of  the  gyascutus,  the  quadruped  with 
a  short  fore-leg  and  a  short  hind-leg  on  the 
right  side.  This  animal  was  especially 
created  to  run  around  a  mountain-side  in 
Oregon,  sufficiently  distant  to  escape  imme- 
diate investigation. 

The  more  ancient  Bohemians  will  recol- 
lect that  this  discovery  led  to  an  equally 
interesting  discovery  of  a  corresponding 
quadruped  with  a  short  fore-leg  and  a  short 
hind-leg  on  the  left  side,  and  which  by  Di- 
vine Providence  was  destined  to  run  around 
the  same  mountain  from  the  other  side.  As 
these  two  animals  proved  to  be  of  opposite 
sexes,  this  arrangement  was  evidently  in- 
tended to  introduce  them  to  each  other,  and 


THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL.  67 

is  another  proof  of  the  benevolent  although 
frequently  frustrated  intentions  of  Divine 
Providence.  The  discovery  of  the  second 
animal  does  not  belong  to  our  Bohemian 
brother  Caxton;  we  owe  it  to  one  of  the 
appropriation  scientists  who  occupies  a  po- 
sition in  Berkeley  and  in  the  hearts  of  our 
grangers,  and  who  wants  only  an  initiative 
to  run  through  a  whole  series  of  discove- 
ries. 

But  our  learned  and  ever-watchful 
brother  Caxton,  as  many  will  recollect, 
saved  on  another  occasion  our  country  from 
a  dire  calamity.  It  was  in  the  year  A.  D. 
1868,  when  a  party  that  had  spent  the  even- 
ing at  the  Cliff  House  discovered  the  moon 
in  the  act  of  approaching  the  earth  at  a 
rate  that,  according  to  exact  astronomical 
calculations,  would  have  brought  that  ce- 
lestial body  in  sixteen  days,  eight  hours, 
and  thirty-five  minutes  in  contact  with  the 
earth.  As  the  clash  would  take  place  south 
of  Market  Street,  and,  as  that  part  of  the 
city  had  already  previously  suffered  from 


68  THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

the  Second-Street  cut,  real  estate  south  of 
Market  Street  was  falling  rapidly.  And 
it  was  not  only  the  giant  proportions  of  the 
approaching  luminary  increasing  in  mathe- 
matical proportion;  nay,  the  member  of  the 
returning  party  even  discovered  a  second 
moon,  a  satellite  of  our  earth  hitherto  un- 
known to  astronomers.  The  officers  of  the 
Barbary  Coast  Survey,  it  is  true,  had,  by 
an  algebraic  formula  perfectly  known  to 
themselves,  succeeded  in  influencing  the 
perigee  in  a  way  to  make  the  moon  fall  on 
England;  but  our  esteemed  brother  Caxton, 
with  a  penstroke  and  a  little  printer's  ink, 
removed  the  whole  danger.  Some  pretend 
that  the  moon,  having  spent  all  her  finan- 
cial power  in  railroad  tickets,  was  not  able 
to  reach  England  and  had  been  precipitated 
into  the  Atlantic  Ocean.  This  probably  did 
happen  to  that  second  moon  seen  by  the 
members  of  the  Cliff  House  party,  as  this 
second  moon  is  missing  since  that  time. 
Now,  imagine  the  disturbance  of  the  moon 
suddenly  arriving  in  this  country  with  a 


THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL.  69 

cargo  of  undesirable  immigrants,  not  one 
of  them  with  a  letter  of  introduction  to 
Frank  Pixley! 

Thus  the  great  Caxton  saved  the  country; 
on  another  occasion  he  saved  the  planet. 
You  must  recollect  that  in  the  year  A.  D. 
1865  a  chemist  had  discovered  a  substance, 
otherwise  useless,  that  would  ignite  the 
hydrogen  of  the  ocean.  Now,  in  itself  a 
burning  ocean  would  prove  an  assistance  to 
the  McKinley  bill,  and,  by  cutting  off  im- 
port, greatly  favor  home  industry;  but, 
unfortunately,  the  fire  would  communicate 
to  rivers  and  wells,  and  thereby  prevent 
bathing,  cleaning  of  bottles,  painting  in 
water-colors,  and  prove  a  great  distress 
to  our  Fish  Commissioners.  Our  Bohemian 
brother  Caxton,  whose  watchful  eye  had 
espied  the  danger  in  time,  offered  from  his 
own  pocket  an  amount  of  millions  that 
would  have  astonished  even  a  Californian, 
as  well  as  a  corner  drug-store,  to  the  chemist 
to  desist  from  his  diabolical  plan  to  set 
fire  to  the  ocean;  and  as  this  malevolent 


70  THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

chemist  asked  for  more  millions  and  two 
drug-stores,  our  brother  Caxton  threw  him 
from  the  platform  of  a  railroad-car  passing 
Cape  Horn,  which  feat  he  also  executed 
by  a  small  quantity  of  printer's  ink. 

I  am  sorry  to  say  that  our  Bohemian 
brother  Caxton  did  not  succeed  in  saving 
the  unfortunate  miner  who  drank  the  water 
contained  in  a  geode  and  became  petrified 
and  fossilized  in  a  time  of  twenty  minutes. 
But  his  publication  of  the  event  has  gone 
far  to  warn  the  public  against  that  most  in- 
sidious drink — water. 

What  shall  I  say  in  praise  of  the  powerful 
McCracken  Bungletoe,  alias  Tommy  New- 
comb,  who,  in  his  great  victory  of  mind 
over  matter,  left  Mestayer  under  the  table, 
and  with  one  foot  on  the  body  of  the  slain 
warrior  and  the  other  in  the  spittoon,  asked 
for  another  horn  of  whisky?  Or  the  great 
Apache  chief  and  ancient  mariner,  Rear- 
Admiral  Cremony?  But  the  latter  has  a 
worthy  successor  in  nautical  lore  in  the  in- 
imitable Bromley,  under  whose  flag  I  dared 


THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL.  71 

to  round  Cape  Horn  so  persistently  that  my 
head  began  to  swim. 

In  regard  to  tactics  on  a  more  or  less  dry 
land,  we  have  General  Barnes,  who,  as  the 
Leonidas  of  the  nineteenth  century,  fought 
in  that  terrible  Amador  war. 

Alas!  we  cannot  deny  that  many  of  the 
old  members  are  no  more  with  us;  some 
have  paid  their  tribute  to  nature,  some 
have  reformed  their  morals.  But  that  well- 
organized  army  of  young  Bohemia  which 
I  see  before  me  is  a  guarantee  that  the  future 
will  be  like  the  past,  and  that  a  bright  time 
is  in  store  for  old  Bohemia. 


THE   SHOWMAN. 

Now  is  the  time  and  the  opportunity  to 
see  the  great  Mastodon! 

Walk  in,  gentlemen!  Admission,  the 
nominal  amount  of  twenty-five  cents! 

The  bones  of  this  fossil  monster  have  been 
found  at  a  depth  of  one  hundred  and  twen- 
ty-five feet  below  the  green  sward  of  this 
beautiful  earth. 

Now  is  the  time  and  the  opportunity! 

It  stands  twenty-five  feet  on  its  legs,  is 
twenty-five  feet  long.  It  has  been  found 
under  one  hundred  and  twenty-five  degrees 
of  longitude,  which  gives  to  the  animal  the 
enormous  length  of  one  hundred  and  sev- 
enty-five feet. 

Now  is  the  time ! 

This  picture  of  the  animal  is  taken  after 


74  THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

a  photograph  by  Bradley  &  Rulofson.  As 
you  see  here,  the  animal  fed  exclusively  on 
boa  constrictors.  Anybody  that  has  con- 
ferred with  Montgomery  Queen  on  the 
price  of  boa  constrictors  will  know  the 
enormous  price  of  such  luxury.  So  the  un- 
scrupulous wisdom  of  Divine  Providence 
has  endowed  this  beatiful  creature  with  an 
unlimited  capacity  to  live  on  credit. 

Now  is  the  time ! 

Professor  Huxley,  in  conjunction  with 
the  Alia  California  and  other  bodies  of  in- 
scrutable wisdom  with  whom  we  have  been 
in  communication,  agrees  that  this  animal 
has  lived  one  hundred  and  twenty-five  years 
before  the  Flood.  That  arrow-head  that 
looks  like  a  fragment  of  a  broken  whisky- 
bottle  has  been  found  near  his  left  hind- 
leg,  which  circumstance  proves  that  this 
animal  had  sufficient  mental  power  to  run 
away  from  its  enemies,  and  proves  at  the 
same  time  that  the  San  Francisco  Society 
to  Prevent  Cruelty  to  Animals  was  not  then 
in  existence.  One  of  the  enormous  tusks 


THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL.  75 

has  a  filling,  which  circumstance  proves 
the  antiquity  of  dentistry. 

Now  is  the  time ! 

Listen  to  the  Mastodon! 

Now  I  am  to  lecture ! 

Recollect,  gentlemen,  now  is  the  time! 

This  giant  skeleton  has  been  sold  to  the 
British  Museum  for  the  moderate  sum  of 
one  hundred  and  twenty-five  thousand  dol- 
lars, and  here  I  am  on  the  road  to  an  inde- 
pendent fortune.  Now,  you  will  say,  If 
that  man  is  on  the  way  to  an  independent 
fortune,  why  does  he  take  all  the  trouble 
to  lecture  here  every  night  by  torchlight  on 
the  sidewalk,  without  any  protection  for  his 
learned  head  but  the  canopy  of  heaven? 

Gentlemen,  here  I  stand  on  the  green  soil 
of  this  beautiful  State  of  California.  I  am 
proud  to  be  a  son  of  this  free  country  and 
to  enlighten  my  fellow-citizens  on  the  sub- 
ject of  antediluvian  creation. 

Now  is  the  time ! 

The  youthful  hope  of  the  American  fu- 
ture, only  ten  cents! 


LAST  JINKS   ON  SACRAMENTO  STREET. 

ILLUSTRIOUS  SIRE:  I  congratulate  you 
that  on  this  festive  occasion  you  preside 
over  this  enlightened  Bohemian  body.  It 
was  always  considered  a  high  honor  to  pre- 
side on  Christmas  night,  when  the  strictest 
privacy  protects  the  impressive  rites  and 
dark  mysteries  of  Bohemia.  But  under  the 
present  circumstances,  when  we  are  pre- 
pared to  emigrate  from  this  sacred  abode  to 
the  distant  shores  of  Pine  Street,  to  prepare 
a  new  home  for  the  Pilgrim  Fathers  of 
Bohemia,  you  will  not  object  when  I  com- 
pare you  to  the  Mayflower.  This  night  is 
the  last  night  that  the  sacred  rites  of  High 
Jinks  are  to  be  celebrated  in  these  rooms. 
It  is  the  first  time  that  we  celebrate  the 
last  High  Jinks.  May  they  turn  out  to  be 
everlasting. 


78  THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

Your  name,  illustrious  Sire,  will  be 
handed  down  to  posterity  and  will  turn  out 
an  eternal  botheration  to  schoolma'ams 
when  they  pass  their  examination;  and  both 
of  us,  when,  with  the  assistance  of  my  medi- 
cal brethren,  we  have  shed  off  this  mortal 
clay,  will  form  a  constellation  in  the  sky, 
called  Major  Ursus,  or  the  Bromleyades. 

At  this  moment  begins  a  new  era  in  the 
history  of  man,  an  epoch  that  even  reverses 
some  laws  of  nature  heretofore  considered 
of  universal  power. 

Most  illustrious  Collega,  you  will  recol- 
lect a  private  conversation  once  held  in  this 
sacred  room  when  you  justly  remarked  that 
we  could  pay  our  debts  by  mental  powers. 
Colonel  Hawes  then  said  that  Archimedes, 
a  Syracusan  philosopher,  who  received  his 
name  from  the  Archimedean  screw,  has 
established  the  law  that  the  strongest  man 
could  not  lift  his  own  body,  and  that  even 
our  Collega  Beverly  Cole,  when  ship- 
wrecked, could  not  lift  himself  out  of  the 
ocean  by  his  scalp-lock,  but  required  a  boat 


THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL.  79 

to  save  his  valuable  life.  You  will  recall 
that  important  discussion  and  will  feel 
proud  of  this  victory,  which  Tommy  New- 
comb  would  call  a  victory  of  mind  over 
matter. 


ON    DREAMS. 

NIGHT-DREAMS  are  private  property, — 
they  belong  to  the  individual;  but  day- 
dreams are  public  property,  and  belong  to 
the  century,  or  a  certain  stage  of  social  and 
scientific  development.  The  day-dream  one 
hundred  years  ago  was  the  philosopher's 
stone  and  the  transmutation  of  metals.  It  is 
a  remarkable  anachronism  that  in  this  en- 
lightened age  the  dream  of  the  transmuta- 
tion of  metals  has  been  revived  in  Chile  by 
Mr.  Paraf,  who  persuaded  the  unsophisti- 
cated natives  of  that  country  to  buy  stock 
in  an  enterprise  to  transmute  copper  into 
silver.  Now,  we  all  know  that  gold  and 
silver  can  be  changed,  but  they  cannot  be 
transmuted.  Silver,  it  is  true,  is  a  metal  that 
dissolves  readily  in  alcoholic  fluids  and  pre- 
cipitates out  of  this  solution  on  the  tip  of  the 


82  THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

nose  in  the  shape  of  copper;  but  this  copper 
is  the  product  of  a  vital,  not  a  metallurgical, 
process. 

The  dreams  of  our  own  age  turn  chiefly 
upon  vital  processes.  There  is  another 
conundrum  which  we  strive  to  solve,  and 
that  is  the  origin  of  organic  life.  We  look 
no  more  for  the  transmutation  of  metals,  but 
for  the  transmutation  of  plants  or  animals 
into  other  species;  but  the  laws  of  our 
Society  for  the  Prevention  of  Cruelty  to 
Animals  have  put  a  fine  on  Darwinian  ex- 
periments. We  even  suppose  ourselves  the 
victim  of  some  transmutative  process  from 
a  rather  doubtful  ancestry,  and  some  promi- 
nent members  of  the  medical  fraternity  seek 
with  great  care  and  perseverance  for  a  con- 
necting link  wherewith  to  excuse  their  own 
personal  appearance.  But  there  exists  no 
connecting  link,  for  we  are  entirely  distinct 
from  all  other  types  of  creation  by  one  fac- 
ulty— that  of  smoking  tobacco.  The  idea 
that  the  clouds  are  produced  by  the  angels 
smoking  tobacco  is  exploded ;  it  is  in  direct 


THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL.  83 

opposition  to  the  doctrines  of  modern  sci- 
ence and  the  meteorological  section  of  our 
Academy  of  Sciences. 

It  was  one  of  the  day-dreams  of  our 
ancestors  that  organic  life,  and  even  the 
human  species,  could  be  produced  by  chem- 
ical processes.  Goethe,  in  the  second  part 
of  his  "Faust,"  alludes  to  this  day-dream 
when  he  introduces  the  homunculus,  a 
human  being  that  was  the  result  of  an  al- 
chymistic  process.  At  present  there  are 
many  who  believe  that  organic  life  may  be 
produced  by  certain  stages  of  fermentation. 
Fermentation  is  sin,  even  when  the  duty  is 
paid,  and  Vinegar  Bitters  the  only  refresh- 
ment permitted  to  the  faithful.  The  dis- 
ciples of  the  fermentation  theory  quote  an 
experiment  by  which  they  produce  fleas  by 
moistening  sawdust.  I  have  tried  the  ex- 
periment, but  could  not  raise  anything,  not 
even  a  self-made  man,  and  only  after  many 
complicated  processes  I  succeeded  in  raising 
a  life-insurance  agent — and  that  only  after 
having  added  to  the  sawdust  an  addled  egg. 


84  THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

Now,  my  Bohemian  brethren,  you  cannot 
derive  much  satisfaction  from  such  results, 
and,  I  admonish  you,  if  you  want  to  produce 
organic  life,  follow  the  old,  approved 
method  founded  on  the  Darwinian  law  of 
natural  selection  and  mutual  affection. 


SCHILLER  AND  GOETHE  AS  BOHEMIANS. 

THE  first  traces  of  Bohemian  sympathies 
in  Schiller  we  find  in  his  dramatic  play 
"Die  Rauber,"  in  a  passage  where  one  of 
those  interesting  highwaymen  advises  to 
withdraw  to  the  Bohemian  forests — a  deli- 
cate allusion  to  our  midsummer  celebration. 
In  Schiller's  later  career  we  find  two  other 
and  more  celebrated  plays  localized  in  Bo- 
hemia, namely,  "Wallenstein's  Lager"  and 
"Wallenstein's  Death";  but  Wallenstein's 
death  was  not  caused  by  lager,  as  is  erro- 
neously supposed  by  ignorant  people. 
Schiller  had  a  medical  education,  but  prac- 
ticed medicine  only  for  a  very  short  time; 
in  fact,  he  has  killed  considerably  more  peo- 
ple in  his  dramatical  plays  than  by  medical 
prescriptions.  In  this  regard  he  is  much  my 
inferior,  but  he  is  a  greater  poet.  In  his 


86  THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

later  years  he  was  appointed  Professor  of 
History  at  the  University  of  Jena.  If  he 
had  remained  faithful  to  the  science  of 
medicine,  he  might  have  become  Professor 
of  Hysterics  at  the  Toland  College,  like  our 
Bohemian  brother,  Professor  Dr.  Beverly 
Cole. 

Let  us  now  investigate  the  Bohemian 
qualities  of  Goethe  and  his  origin.  Goethe's 
grandsire  was  a  blacksmith,  and,  as  our 
grand  Sire  is  at  present  a  Taylor,  Goethe 
may  consider  himself  our  equal ;  and  so  he 
was  in  reality,  for  when  he  studied  law  he 
joined  an  organization  analogous  to  this.  In 
his  autobiography,  headed  "Truth  and  Fic- 
tion," he  describes  accurately  the  club  and 
also  the  untimely  end  of  this  benevolent  in- 
stitution :  The  club  was  not  careful  enough 
in  selecting  its  members.  They  admitted  so 
many  respectable  people  that  the  club  lost 
its  bad  reputation,  and  then  they  dissolved 
with  such  violence  that  some  members  re- 
mained dissolute  ever  after.  Some  people 
say  that  in  his  book  "Werther's  Leiden" 


THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL.  87 

Goethe  advocated  suicide,  but,  after  all,  this 
advocation  was  not  without  reason.  Sui- 
cide, when  properly  directed,  could  be 
made  very  useful,  like  the  "hara  kiri"  of 
the  Japanese.  If,  for  instance,  all  the  mem- 
bers of  our  next  Legislature  could  be  in- 
duced to  commit  "hara  kiri"  before  enter- 
ing Sacramento,  what  a  blessing  it  would  be 
for  this  country!  But  as  it  is  generally  the 
wrong  people  who  commit  suicide,  a  careful 
government  ought  to  warn  them  publicly  by 
substituting  for  the  antiquated  advice,  "Go 
to  Hewston  Hastings,"  the  impressive 
words,  "Commit  no  suicide."  Goethe's 
most  celebrated  play  is  "  Faust."  Faust  was 
a  great  conjurer  who  raised  the  devil  and 
took  a  mortgage  on  his  soui.  The  formula 
has  since  been  tried  by  many  people,  but 
without  any  satisfactory  result,  for  Old 
Iniquity  did  not  appear;  from  which  cir- 
cumstance one  may  infer  how  much  in  these 
dull  times  the  value  of  souls  has  declined. 

So,  my  dear  brethren,  keep  on  the  path  of 
righteousness,  for  you  will  find  in  that  other 


88  THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

place  no  improvement  in  business  matters, 
but  the  same  dull  times  as  here. 


THE  YEAR'S  PROGRESS. 

MOST  GRACIOUS  SIRE  AND  DEARLY  BE- 
LOVED BRETHREN:  During  the  past  year  I 
have  assiduously  studied  and  diligently  ob- 
served. When  formerly  the  progress  of 
morals  was  the  object  in  which  my  energies 
concentrated,  it  is  now  progress  in  general. 
To  this  sole  object  I  have  sacrificed  my 
whole  time.  I  have  lived  like  a  hermit.  I 
have  withdrawn  from  society.  I  scarcely 
know  the  inside  of  a  saloon  or  the  outside  of 
a  bar,  because  I  have  steered  my  boat  out  of 
the  wild  breakers  of  the  bar,  where  sirens 
sang  to  Ulysses,  into  the  quiet  port  of  peace- 
ful domestic  intoxication.  I  am  here  to 
offer  you  the  results  of  my  observations 
regarding  morals,  science,  art,  and  things 
in  general. 

It  is  a  well-known  fact  that  moral  phil- 


90  THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

osophy  is  the  only  science  in  which,  since 
the  time  of  Socrates,  no  discovery  has  been 
made.  It  has  been  reserved  for  my  own  in- 
vestigations to  discover  the  important  axiom 
that  in  a  free  country  no  citizen  must  be 
tyrannized  by  his  own  principles.  In  as- 
tronomy I  have  to  record  the  recent  discov- 
ery of  an  old  split  in  one  of  the  rings  of 
Saturn.  It  is  true  this  split  was  known  be- 
fore and  was  called  "Encke's  division,"  or, 
according  to  the  reporters  of  our  news- 
papers, "Yankee  division" ;  but  the  discov- 
ery of  its  exact  nature  was  reserved  for  our 
Bohemian  astronomer,  Colonel  Hawes,  who 
has  spent  many  nights  watching  the  rings  of 
Saturn  through  different  glasses,  and  even 
bottles.  According  to  the  statements  of  this 
eminent  scientist,  the  split  in  the  ring  of 
Saturn  cannot  be  mended  and  is  beyond  re- 
pair. The  practical  importance  of  this  fact 
cannot  be  overrated,  for  it  is  more  than 
probable  that  all  other  rings  will  follow  the 
example  of  Saturn  and  split;  and  when  all 
those  rings  that  at  present  prevent  progress 


THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL.  91 

in  science  and  art  have  split,  what  a  bright 
future  lies  then  before  California! 

As  to  forest  culture,  we  have  to  record  a 
most  important  step.  The  committee  has 
empowered  a  posse  of  intelligent  school- 
ma'ams  of  both  sexes  to  plant  trees  on  the 
roadsides.  These  trees  will  be  exhibited  to 
all  passers-by  for  a  nominal  entrance  fee  as 
soon  as  the  last  of  our  forest  trees  has  be- 
come extinct. 

The  insect  world  has  shown  through  all 
the  later  years  a  perceptible  progress  and 
enjoyable  tendency  to  copulate  and  multi- 
ply. We  have  had  grasshoppers,  codling- 
moths,  scale-bugs,  and  our  most  gracious 
Sire  has  treated  successfully,  by  mercurial 
ointment,  several  cases  of  phylloxera  in  per- 
sons that  had  come  in  too  close  a  contact  with 
the  vineyard  of  a  friend.  We  are  uncertain 
whom  we  have  to  thank  for  this  revival  of 
the  insect  world — our  brother  Harry  Ed- 
wards, for  his  absence,  or  our  State  ento- 
mologists, for  their  presence. 

The  year  has  been  rather  dry  and  our 


92  THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

farmers  found  sufficient  reason  to  complain ; 
so  the  inscrutable  wisdom  of  Divine  Provi- 
dence, whose  pet  is  the  California  granger, 
sent  us  rain  enough  to  give  him  cause  to 
complain  about  inundation.  This  dispensa- 
tion of  Providence  is  still  going  on,  because 
Providence  has  been  long  enough  in  office 
to  know  that  as  soon  as  it  stops  raining  the 
California  granger  will  growl  about  un- 
usual dryness.  So  the  rain  goes  on  and  a 
new  deluge  is  fairly  started.  The  more 
thoughtful  members  of  our  Academy  of 
Sciences  make  preparations  to  transform 
their  hall  into  a  Noah's  ark,  in  order  to  save 
all  those  animals  in  their  stuffed  state  whose 
ancestors  Noah  preserved  alive.  The  citi- 
zens of  this  State  are  much  puzzled  about 
the  cause  of  the  flood.  Heaven  so  far  has 
always  shown  patience  to  their  shortcom- 
ings. They  are  not  conscious  of  an  unusual 
amount  of  wickedness,  nor  is  there  any 
California  Legislature  expected  to  meet  at 
Sacramento. 

As  usual,  our  authorities  have  paid  no 


THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL.  93 

attention  to  the  wishes  of  the  people.  It  is 
now  twelve  years  since  we  have  petitioned 
them  to  have  Telegraph  Hill  converted  into 
a  volcano,  so  that,  at  appropriate  times,  we 
could  have  eruptions  for  the  benefit  of  tour- 
ists who  write  books  in  Boston  about  Cali- 
fornia dynamiters,  and  eruptions  of  the  skin 
are  but  poor  excuses  for  a  real  volcanic 
eruption.  This  community  of  honest,  hard- 
drinking  taxpayers  is  entitled  to  at  least  one 
volcano.  We  have  been  frustrated  in  our 
dearest  wishes;  nevertheless,  we  have  to  be 
thankful,  especially  as  it  would  not  help  to 
be  otherwise. 


SOME    REMARKS    ON   THE   SECRET   RE- 
LATIONS   BETWEEN    CHEMISTRY 
AND  POLITICAL  ECONOMY. 

THERE  are  but  few  problems  left  for  the 
investigation  of  the  modern  scientist.  One 
of  the  most  interesting  problems  is  the  still 
insufficiently  explained  relation  between 
politics  and  alcohol.  We  have  spent  much 
of  our  own  valuable  time  in  the  study  of 
this  problem;  we  have  distorted  Darwinism 
into  the  most  impossible  shapes ;  we  have  in- 
vented a  long  series  of  evolutions;  we  have 
experimented  on  our  own  system  by  expos- 
ing it  to  the  action  of  alcohol  heated  up  to 
the  production  of  vapor  and  then  again 
brought  it  in  contact  with  a  glacial  period 
sucked  through  a  straw.  Then  we  have 
searched  history,  ancient  and  modern,  sacred 
and  profane,  but  mostly  profane.  The  re- 


96  THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

suit  of  these  investigations  was  an  enormous 
accumulation  of  collateral  facts,  and  in  re- 
gard to  explanations  a  new  hypothesis. 

Homer  in  his  Iliad  is  one  of  the  first 
authors  offering  instances  of  the  mystic 
relation  between  patriotism  and  drink. 
Wherever  this  reliable  historian  describes 
a  meeting  of  the  enlightened  nation  of  the 
Greeks,  he  never  neglects  the  aithopa- 
oinon — the  fiery  wine.  He  minutely  de- 
scribes the  depas  amphikypellon  used  by 
the  venerable  Nestor  when  engaged  in 
state  affairs.  Learned  philologists  explain 
the  two  handles  so  expressly  mentioned  by 
Homer  as  means  to  handle  more  easily  a 
cup  of  proportions  unusual  even  in  the  he- 
roic age;  for  the  inspired  poet  and  historian 
states  at  the  same  time  that  ten  mortal  men 
as  they  are  nowadays  could  not  have  emp- 
tied it.  Alas !  the  world  degenerates,  and  the 
cups  of  our  days  are  small  and  have  very 
thick  bottoms.  Homer  also  carefully  notes 
down  that  before  any  decisive  step  in  poli- 
tics was  taken  the  heroes  took  a  quantity  of 


THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL.  97 

wine  in  proportion  to  the  importance  of  the 
case :  "  Autar  epei  posios  kai  edetyos  ex  eron 
hento"  A  similar  custom  must  have  pre- 
vailed amongst  the  Romans.  We  are  not 
quite  certain,  but  we  think  it  was  Cicero  or 
somebody  else  who  first  pronounced  the 
axioma :  "  Vox  populi,  vox  whisky."  We 
now  recollect  distinctly  the  passage  is  to  be 
found  in  Cicero's  book  "De  Officiis,"  or, 
The  Surest  Way  to  Get  into  Office. 

Julius  Caesar  also,  when  about  to  cross  the 
Rubicon,  spoke  the  historical  word:  "lacta 
alea  esto," — Let  us  shake  for  drinks. 

Now,  the  same  phenomenon  related  by 
the  ancients  is  witnessed,  and  let  us  say  is  re- 
ligiously observed,  by  our  contemporaneous 
generation.  But  you  will  see  a  very  mate- 
rial change  in  the  system  of  administering 
the  alcohol.  With  Homer  it  is  always  the 
kings  and  heroes  that  do  the  drinking,  and 
the  people  the  paying;  but  during  the  re- 
publican government  of  ancient  Rome  the 
people  do  the  drinking,  and,  exactly  as  it  is 
in  our  own  country,  the  wealthy  or  those  that 


98  THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

want  to  become  so  pay  for  the  drinks.  You 
will  observe  that  all  political  meetings,  may 
their  principles  be  as  divergent  as  possible, 
agree  in  one  point:  after  having  saved  their 
country  they  adjourn  into  adjacent  bar- 
rooms, where  they  mix  their  public  spirit 
with  kindred  spirits.  You  will  say  our 
Academy  of  Sciences  acts  differently,  but 
you  forget,  firstly,  that  our  Academy  is  a 
scientific,  not  a  political  body,  and,  second- 
ly, that  there  is  no  decent  barroom  in  the 
vicinity. 

Now,  this  intimate  relation  between  pa- 
triotism and  alcohol  has  even  entered  our 
English  language  in  the  expression,  "A  man 
of  public  spirit,"  by  which  expression  we 
infer  that  this  worthy  man  takes  his  spirits 
publicly  with  boon  companions  whom  he 
treats,  but  not  in  the  solitude  of  his  domes- 
ticity. 

This  is  all  very  clear  and  intelligible  even 
to  the  unsophisticated  mind  of  a  San  Fran- 
cisco city  father,  but  now  comes  in  the  ques- 
tion how  to  account  for  this  phenomenon. 


THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL.  99 

We  have  stated  before  that  we  have  expe- 
rienced and  investigated  and  have  come 
rather  near  the  solution  of  the  problem, 
which  is  a  chemical  one.  Here  is  our  ex- 
planation :  Political  questions  have  no  affin- 
ity to  water.  This  is  a  conclusion  a  priori, 
for  we  have  not  tried  the  water.  Neither  are 
they  soluble  in  fixed  oils ;  we  have  tried  cas- 
tor oil.  Now,  it  requires  very  little  chemi- 
cal knowledge  to  see  that  alcohol,  cold  or 
heated  up  to  a  reasonable  degree,  is  the  only 
menstruum  in  which  political  questions  are 
soluble. 


ETHNOLOGY. 

I  AM  certain  you  are  astonished  to  hear 
me  lecture  on  a  subject  so  unfamiliar  to  me 
as  Ethnology.  It  is  the  fault  of  our  most 
gracious  Sire,  who  ordered  me  to  do  so.  He 
probably  meant  Entomology,  but  I  under- 
stood Ethnology,  and  as  this  happened  after 
six  o'clock  P.  M.,  I  am  not  quite  certain  on 
whose  door  I  have  to  lay  the  cause  of  the 
misunderstanding.  In  such  cases  I  always 
lay  it  at  the  door  of  the  other  fellow,  who  in 
this  instance  is  our  most  gracious  Sire. 

I  at  first  intended  to  follow  the  custom  of 
my  fellow-scientists — that  is,  to  compile  an 
ethnological  or  entomological  paper  of 
plagiarisms,  in  which  only  the  errors  are  my 
own;  but,  on  more  mature  reflection,  I 
thought,  as  Alexander  von  Humboldt  is 


102          THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

dead  and  Frank  Pixley  alive,  I  would  not 
run  the  slightest  risk  to  be  discovered  in 
drawing  from  my  own  bold  and  lively  im- 
agination. 

The  first  stage  in  the  existence  of  all  na- 
tions and  humanity  in  general  is  that  of 
Midsummer  High  Jinks,  differing  from  our 
present  ones  only  by  a  large  supply  of  noth- 
ing to  eat  and  to  drink,  but  agreeing  with  it 
by  a  total  absence  of  houses.  I  am  not  pre- 
pared to  state  the  exact  time  to  which  this 
state  of  affairs  has  lasted,  but  I  am  con- 
vinced that  at  the  time  of  Julius  Caesar — 
the  author  of  several  Latin  text-books  still 
in  use  in  our  colleges — a  change  must 
already  have  taken  place,  because  this  J. 
Caesar  wrote  a  book,  "De  bello  Gallico," 
which,  as  a  member  of  our  Board  of  Edu- 
cation has  informed  me,  means  "On  the 
beautiful  Calico."  Now,  these  words  would 
infer  that  the  state  of  society  had  changed 
into  that  of  a  picnic,  if  it  were  not  for  the 
frequent  occurrence  of  the  word  "castra," 
which  word  I  distinctly  recollect  means 


THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL.  103 

"camp,"  and  compels  us  to  look  at  the  ethno- 
logical state  of  Caesar's  period  more  in  the 
light  of  a  camp-meeting. 

The  present  Midsummer  High  Jinks  are 
a  decided  improvement  on  the  original  ar- 
ticle, which  I  have  closely  studied  during 
my  stay  in  Australia.  By  the  kind  recom- 
mendation of  Captain  Schenck,  I  received 
an  invitation  from  the  daughter  of  an  Au- 
stralian chief  to  assist  her  in  arranging  a 
cabinet  of  insects,  which  she  carried  about 
her  through  all  the  wanderings  of  her  tribe. 
I  accepted  the  invitation,  arranged  the  col- 
lection, exchanged  specimens,  and,  as  the 
office  of  State  Entomologist  was  already 
filled  by  an  intelligent  carpenter,  I  was  re- 
ceived in  the  bosom  of  the  tribe,  obtained 
the  right  to  vote  and  at  the  same  time  differ- 
ent degrees  of  relationship,  with  all  the 
privileges  otherwise  only  conceded  to  Irish 
cousins. 

Owing  to  a  failure  of  our  crop  of  kan- 
garoos, we  had  to  live  chiefly  on  mission- 
aries. Whenever  the  supply  was  exhausted 


104          THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

we  took  to  stealing  sheep,  which  change  of 
diet  at  last  aroused  the  British  lion.  For 
weeks  I  had  breakfasted,  lunched,  dined, 
and  souped  on  mutton.  My  hair,  formerly 
straight,  began  to  curl  and  grow  crisp  by  the 
constant  feeding  on  the  wool-bearing  sheep 
— as  you  can  see  now — when  the  catastrophe 
drew  near.  The  battle  was  imminent.  On 
our  side,  naked  bodies,  wooden  spears,  and 
the  trust  in  Divine  Justice  and  our  swift 
feet;  on  the  other  side,  thoroughbred  horses, 
Minie  rifles,  and  the  untamed  courage  of 
the  amateur  soldier.  The  words  of  our 
valiant  chief  are  still  ringing  in  my  ears; 
" There,"  he  said,  "is  the  enemy  of  our 
homes.  Most  of  them  are  fat,  tender,  sleek, 
and  in  splendid  condition.  They  will  re- 
quire but  little  cooking  to  be  very  nice.  At 
present  they  are  not  nice ;  but  who  would  be 
afraid  to  die  when  the  honor  and  glory  of 
his  country  is  at  stake?  It  is  not  hard  to  die ; 
the  biggest  fool  can  die,  and  I  have  seen 
them  do  so  frequently." 

Enthused  by  this  speech,  we  raised  the 


THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL.  105 

war-whoop  and  then  followed  the  example 
of  the  valorous  chief  and  climbed  each  a 
gum-tree.  We  gained  by  this  maneuver  the 
most  decided  victory,  because  the  horses  of 
the  enemy  got  frightened  and  ran  away  with 
the  valorous  warriors  of  the  home  guard, 
with  the  exception  of  a  few  bold  men  whose 
horses  refused  to  run  and  took  to  kicking. 
Those  men,  after  having  made  us  a  present 
of  their  horses,  tried  very  hard  to  join  the 
corps  d'armee.  We  hoped  they  would  suc- 
ceed, and  ate  their  horses.  As  these  horses 
refused  to  talk,  it  will  remain  a  mystery  for- 
ever at  whose  instigation  their  fellow-horses 
ran  from  battle.  I  am  certain  it  was  no 
bribe  from  our  side;  perhaps  it  was  a  strike 
for  higher  wages. 

Alas!  those  happy  days  are  passed,  and 
I  am  the  only  survivor  of  that  once  pow- 
erful tribe.  The  men  have  been  shot  by 
prejudiced  shepherds  and  cattleherders; 
the  unprotected  females  have  served  as 
food  to  their  affectionate  neighbors;  and 
at  present  I  am  the  only  living  man  that 


106          THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

knows  the  grammar  and  spelling  of  their 
language. 

Alexander  von  Humboldt  mentions  in  his 
travels  a  certain  parrot,  the  parrot  of  the 
Atures,  who  was  the  only  being  that  talked 
the  language  of  that  extinct  race.  That  is 
exactly  my  case.  It  remains  now  to  draw  a 
moral  for  you  and  administer  the  customary 
admonitions : 

First,  my  dear  Bohemian  brethren,  let  us 
continue  to  celebrate  this  anniversary  of  the 
creation  of  the  world ; 

Secondly,  let  us  keep  up  the  difference 
between  the  original  Midsummer  High 
Jinks  and  our  present  refined  celebration  by 
always  laying  in  a  good  stock  of  good 
things ;  and 

Thirdly,  and  finally,  let  us  not  become  ex- 
tinct. 


ON    COMMERCE. 

I  AM  not  here  to  discuss  Christmas  from 
a  dogmatic  point  of  view;  that  has  been 
done  by  our  most  gracious  Sire  and  other 
pulpits  of  this  city.  I  am  here  to  discuss  a 
new  side  of  the  question — the  commercial 
one.  Christmas  is  the  time  when  we  are 
expected  by  the  whole  world  to  settle  our 
bills,  instead  of  running  up  new  ones.  A 
friend  of  mine,  and  at  the  same  time  one 
of  the  greatest  authorities  in  Bohemian 
financiering,  invented  a  new  commercial 
system  by  not  paying  the  old  bills  and  let- 
ting the  new  bills  grow  old.  It  is  his  view 
on  commerce  which  I  am  to  develop  here. 

The  word  "commerce"  is  derived  from 
the  Latin  merx,  genitive  mercis,  which  does 
not  mean  mercy — of  which  commercial 
people  show  very  little  to  each  other. 


108          THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

Merx  means  a  ware,  and  mercari  to  trade. 
The  Greek  verb  peirao  signifies  the  same, 
but  its  verbal  substantive  peirates  does  not 
mean  a  merchant,  and  is  a  proof  that  the 
ancient  Greek  knew  life-insurance  com- 
panies, syndicates  of  mines,  and  similar 
institutions  as  well  as  we  do.  There  are 
several  institutions  in  mysterious  connection 
with  commerce;  for  instance,  the  Custom 
House.  This  institution  was  created  for 
two  different  purposes:  First,  to  cause  in- 
vestigations; secondly,  to  break  the  antennae 
of  the  butterflies  imported  by  our  most  gra- 
cious Sire. 

As  the  surface  of  this  planet  is  divided 
into  dry  land  and  ocean,  so  is  the  commer- 
cial community  divided  into  dry-goods 
merchants  and  liquor-dealers;  but,  accord- 
ing to  the  Bohemian  system,  they  are  classi- 
fied as  such  that  give  credit  and  others  that 
give  none.  There  is  a  close  connection 
between  interest  and  capital;  for  instance, 
British  interest  will  suffer  when  the  Turkish 
capital  is  lost.  But  as  the  true  Bohemian 


THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL.  109 

seldom  receives  interest,  but  frequently  has 
to  pay  it,  he  will  not  be  such  a  fool  as  to 
fight  for  any  interest.  And  so  I  hope  you 
will  all  join  me  in  the  pious  wish :  "  Peace 
on  earth,  good  will  to  men." 


PREHISTORIC    RELICS. 

WHEN  Montgomery  Avenue  was  begun, 
I  expected  that  the  earthwork  necessarily 
connected  with  grading  and  cutting 
through  would  bring  to  light  interesting 
documents  of  prehistoric  life  on  this  coast. 
My  most  sanguine  expectations  were  real- 
ized, and  I  succeeded  in  securing  the  in- 
teresting objects  which  you  see  here  and 
which  will  form  the  nucleus  of  a  most  valu- 
able archaeological  collection. 

The  objects  which  are  before  you  were 
all  found  on  an  area  extending  from  the 
corner  of  Montgomery  Avenue  and  Jack- 
son Street  to  a  point  near  Stockton  Street, 
where  an  empty  lot  is  crossed  by  the  I45th 
meridian.  By  the  ignorant  this  meridian 
has  been  pronounced  a  clothes-line,  and  by 
some  people  has  even  been  used  as  such. 


112          THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

But  true  science  knows  the  well-established 
difference  between  a  meridian  and  a  clothes- 
line. 

There  are  ample  proofs  that  all  this  dis- 
trict at  a  remote  period  has  been  covered 
by  the  sea — in  fact,  was  the  bottom  of  an 
ocean.  It  probably  was  not  then  inhabited 
by  the  human  race,  and  all  the  objects  of 
human  skill  which  you  see  before  you  date 
from  a  later  period.  Still  an  old  coast  line 
must  have  existed  to  a  comparatively  re- 
cent time,  and  is  recorded  by  the  term 
"Barbary  Coast." 

But  here  you  see  some  other 
proof.  You  see  the  remains  of 
a  bivalve,  closely  related  to  a  now 
living  species.  And  here  you  see  another 
example  of  how  the  sagacity  of  the  modern 
geologist  from  an  apparently  insignificant 
object  draws  the  most  important  conclusions 
and  establishes  facts  of  the  highest  scientific 
interest. 

But  before  entering  into  the  concatena- 
tion of  circumstances,  I  have  to  speak  about 


THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL.  113 

the  unit  to  be  used  in  our  calculation.  As 
the  ancient  Greeks  had  their  chronology 
arranged  in  accordance  to  the  anniversaries 
of  the  Olympics,  where  the  tribes  of  this 
gifted  race  assembled  and  competed  for 
the  crown  of  the  laurel,  so  the  California 
geologist  arranges  his  chronology  in 
correspondence  to  Legislatures,  California 
Olympics,  where  all  the  talent,  the  honesty, 
the  virtue,  the  wisdom,  the  beauty  of  this 
country  meet  and  conglomerate  into  one 
enlightened  body.  Now,  if  we  remember 
that  it  took  five  California  Legislatures  to 
ruin  one  geological  survey,  we  easily  can 
form  an  idea  how  long  the  tertiary  period 
must  have  been  during  which  the  antedilu- 
vian Gryphaea  developed  up  to  the  intellect 
of  the  now  living  oyster. 

You  see  here  several  hollow  cylin- 
drical bodies  of  a  substance  that  by  our 
State  Chemist  has  been  pronounced  a 
silicate  of  potassa.  These  bodies  have 
proved  a  great  puzzle  to  archaeologists,  until, 
by  my  untiring  researches,  it  has  been  estab- 


114  THE  HOOT  OF  THE  OWL. 
lished  beyond  a  doubt  that  these  bodies  were 
objects  of  public  worship.  The  prehistoric 
Indian  imagined  them  inhabited  by  spirits, 
powerful  but  benevolent,  to  whom  he 
brought  offerings  of  small  pieces  of  metal. 
The  silicates  are  found  in  a  state  of  more  or 
less  perfect  preservation  and  in  great  profu- 
sion throughout  that  whole  region,  and  bear 
testimony  of  the  most  early  piety  of  the  red 
man.  In  some  excavations  they  have  been 
found  numerous  enough  to  form  strata; 
these  probably  were  places  of  public  wor- 
ship. 

It  was  in  the  fourth  year  of  our  Bohe- 
mian era  that  it  came  to  pass  that  a  great 
prophet  arrived  from  China,  who  instigated 
the  people  to  destroy  these  idols,  and  con- 
verted a  great  many  to  the  Five-Gallons 
Monotheism.  The  object  of  their  worship 
was  the  great  spirit  of  red  noses,  called 
"LokAh  Lo  Pshon." 

Here  you  see  some  cubic  bodies 
whose  facets  are  ornamented  by 
points  of  different  numbers,  from 


THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL.  1 15 

one  to  six.  Their  use  was  till  lately  a  mys- 
tery to  science,  and  I  am  indebted  to  our 
Board  of  Education  for  the  explanation  of 
these  curious  implements.  According  to 
their  statement,  they  were  called  bones 
by  the  prehistoric  Indian,  from  the  Latin 
words  "bonus  bona  bon,"  which  means  a 
bone,  for  they  were  made  out  of  the  bone 
of  the  untamed  mastodon  of  the  plains. 
They  served  for  the  instruction  of  children 
in  arithmetic.  They  have  been  tried  by  the 
Board  and  found  very  useful  in  complicated 
calculations  about  spiritual  matters. 

As  you  see,  the  points  do  not  exceed  six. 
The  Indian  did  not  count  more  than  six. 
The  decimal  system  was  not  yet  invented, 
and  the  Indian  of  the  period  relied  on  his 
sexual  system. 

This  object  for  a  considerable  time  was 
inexplicable,  until  I  succeeded  in 
restoring  it  to  its  original  form. 


IRISH    HISTORY. 

OUR  Bohemian  brother,  Dr.  Nuttall,  has 
enlightened  us  on  the  subject  of  Irish 
rhetorics.  He  has  quoted  specimens  pro- 
duced by  Irish  ladies  when  in  a  state  of 
virtuous  indignation  or  otherwise  excited. 
But  what  is  Irish  elocution  when  compared 
to  Irish  history?  Irish  history  is  a  history 
of  itself.  It  is  entirely  original;  it  does  not 
connect  with  the  history  of  any  other  na- 
tion, or  even  with  the  history  of  the  world; 
it  is  independent  from  chronology,  or  even 
real  facts. 

There  comes  the  Fenian,  the  Milesian, 
the  Erse.  Nobody  knows  where  they  come 
from,  and  we  only  entertain  a  dark  sus- 
picion where  they  go  to.  They  do  not  con- 
nect with  collateral  history  otherwise  than 
by  the  name  of  some  great  Irishmen  that 


Il8          THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

appear  in  Greek  and  Roman  history,  viz., 
Ovid,  Virgil,  Terence— the  "us"  of  Ovid- 
ius,  Virgilius,  Terentius,  being  merely 
added  partly  to  accommodate  the  second 
declension,  partly  as  a  compliment  to  the 
United  States.  At  the  dawn  of  Irish  his- 
tory we  find  Orion,  who,  in  recompense  for 
the  valuable  advice  which  he  had  given  at 
the  creation  of  the  world,  got  a  position  in 
the  sky,  where  he  still  forms  a  constellation; 
and  it  is  a  comfort  in  these  turbulent  times 
to  see  at  least  one  Irishman  keep  his  posi- 
tion, unaffected  by  the  rotation  of  other 
celestial  bodies. 


BOTANY. 

THE  first  attempt  at  botanical  classifi- 
cation was  that  of  Pliny  the  Younger,  who, 
after  having  failed  as  a  stockbroker,  was  by 
the  influence  of  a  body  of  Haruspices  in 
Rome  appointed  Professor  of  Botany  in 
Pompeii  and  Herculaneum.  He  did  not 
cause  the  eruption  of  Vesuvius,  as  some  in- 
accurate historians  contend,  but  he  perished 
in  it,  and  wrote  afterwards  a  very  valuable 
description  of  this  most  interesting  catastro- 
phe. 

This  ingenious  scientist  divided  the 
whole  vegetable  kingdom  into  the  follow- 
ing classes:  Trees,  shrubs,  vegetables, 
chicken-salad,  mushrooms,  coffee,  wines 
extra.  All  plants  not  belonging  to  one  or 
the  other  of  these  great  classes  he  lumped 


120          THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

together  and  called  "  weeds,"  and  did  not 
take  any  further  notice  of  them. 

You  will  perceive  that  in  this  system 
there  are  six  classes;  the  decimal  notation 
was  not  yet  invented,  or  there  would  un- 
doubtedly have  been  ten.  The  ancients 
counted  only  to  six,  and  as  a  natural  conse- 
quence had  to  rely  upon  their  sexual  sys- 
tem. This  system  was  afterwards  improved 
by  Linnaeus,  who  based  on  the  same  im- 
moral principle  his  arrangement  of  twen- 
ty-four classes,  of  which  the  last,  the  Cryp- 
togamia,  is  the  only  decent  one  and  the  only 
one  whose  study  could  be  recommended  to 
the  Normal  School,  if  they  modestly  re- 
frained from  examining  it  with  the  naked 
eye.  This  state  of  things  could  not  last,  and 
the  Natural  System  was  invented — a  sys- 
tem which  differs  chiefly  from  the  Lin- 
naean  by  the  male  flowers  being  called 
"staminate,"  the  female  "  pistillate,"  or 
vice  versa.  There  are  several  natural  sys- 
tems, all  of  them  more  or  less  important, 
and  it  was  left  to  my  own  exertions  to  de- 


THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL.  121 

vise  a  botanical  system  founded  on  new  and 
entirely  moral  principles.  I  divide  the 
whole  vegetable  kingdom  into  two  classes: 
Eatabilia  and  Non-eatabilia. 

Let  us  first  discuss  the  Non-eatabilia, 
which  class  is  again  divided  into  several  or- 
ders. The  most  important  of  these  are 
Smokeabilia,  Smellabilia,  and  Intracta- 
bilia.  The  order  Smokeabilia  is  too  well 
known  to  the  members  of  this  institution  to 
require  any  further  discussion.  Most  of  the 
Smellabilia  belong  to  the  natural  order  of 
flowers,  and  are  used  for  different  purposes ; 
for  instance,  bouquets  presented  to  ladies. 
Their  color  is  of  great  importance.  At 
marriages  we  present  by  preference  red 
flowers,  signifying  the  blushes  of  the  bride, 
which  vary  in  intensity  from  carnation  to 
fuchsia,  but  generally  keep  to  the  shade  of 
rouge,  bought  at  a  reliable  drug-store.  At 
funerals  the  flowers  are  white  and  blue,  the 
white  being  the  symbol  of  the  moral  purity 
of  the  deceased,  the  blue  representing  the 
state  of  mind  of  the  mourning  friends,  and 


122          THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

the  green  of  the  foliage  the  medical  inno- 
cence of  the  doctor  under  whose  care  the 
patient  died. 

The  highest  order  of  this  class  is  known 
as  Intractabilia,  and  consists  of  those  plants 
which  are  used  for  educational  purposes. 
They  are,  the  hazel,  the  birch,  the  rattan, 
the  bamboo,  which  is  used  for  tropical  im- 
provement of  the  mind,  and  the  lady's 
slipper.  All  these  substances  act  on  the 
mind  by  being  brought  into  quickly  re- 
peated contact  with  the  lower  end  of  the 
spinal  column.  My  esteemed  collaborator 
and  college  professor,  Searby,  and  myself 
owe  all  our  moral  excellence  to  similar 
demonstrations  a  posteriori. 

I  come  to  the  second  class — the  Eata- 
bilia.  It  is  divided  into  three  orders:  i, 
those  which  may  be  boiled ;  2,  those  which 
may  be  roasted;  3,  those  which  may  be 
taken  raw.  This  reminds  me  of  a  thrilling 
adventure  in  the  bold  career  of  the  naval 
hero,  Captain  Schenck.  During  one  of  his 
perilous  voyages  on  the  Pacific  Ocean  he 


THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL.  123 

visited  his  friend  Liti-Li-Li-Ho-Ho,  the 
powerful  king  of  the  Cannibal  Islands.  The 
king  received  his  guest  with  all  the  pomp 
and  honor  usual  in  his  cannibal  empire. 
At  the  feast  given  in  the  Captain's  honor 
the  neighboring  trees  were  decorated  with 
girls  bound  fast  and  awaiting  the  moment 
when  they  should  be  served  at  the  royal 
table.  One  of  the  most  toothsome  was  des- 
tined for  the  dinner  of  the  distinguished 
guest;  and  when  the  Captain  was  asked  in 
what  style  he  would  have  his  girl  served  up, 
he  astonished  his  cannibal  friends  with  the 
words:  "Your  Majesty,  I'll  take  mine  raw." 
Now,  my  friends,  let  us  continue  to  lead  a 
more  virtuous  life,  so  that  when  in  our  here- 
after the  question  is  raised  in  what  style  we 
shall  be  served,  our  guardian  angel  may 
sing  out  like  the  Captain,  "I'll  take  mine 


raw." 


THE   AGE    OF  IRON. 

WE  have  all  been  charmed  by  the  me- 
diaeval love  of  the  great  Scotch  bard;  we 
have  identified  ourselves  with  the  valorous 
knight,  and  have  fought  his  battles,  made 
love  to  the  Baronet's  daughter  till  the  ro- 
mance came  to  an  end  and  we  had  to  return 
to  stern  reality,  Latin  grammar  and  the 
problem  of  Euclid. 

Our  sympathies  with  the  champion  of 
bygone  days  is  but  natural,  for  we  are  his 
lineal  descendants  and  lawful  heirs.  The 
Bohemian  is  the  knight  errant  of  the  nine- 
teenth century,  only  he  wields  the  pen  in- 
stead of  the  battle-ax;  his  enemy  is  no  more 
the  feudal  tyrant,  but  the  modern  fool;  he 
owes  his  dress-coat  to  the  tailor,  not  to  the 
blacksmith.  But  the  romantic  instincts  of 


126          THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

the  illustrious  ancestor  live  still  in  the  Bo- 
hemian heart 

How  we  would  enjoy  it  if  suddenly  this 
room  would  transform  into  a  feudal  hall, 
the  flames  of  the  gaslight  into  torch-bearing 
serfs!  Here  we  sit  at  a  long  table,  clad  in 
steel,  the  trusty  sword  on  our  side.  A  blast 
of  a  horn  pierces  the  air.  It  is  the  signal 
of  the  warden  placed  on  the  battlements  of 
the  tower,  not  the  toothorn  of  the  festive 
hoodlum.  It  is  not  New  Year  which  is  ap- 
proaching; it  is  a  noble  guest  who  reins 
his  courser  at  the  portcullis. 

Hark  the  sound  I  It  comes  like  a  distant 
earthquake  in  search  of  a  situation.  It 
comes  nearer.  It  mounts  the  staircase  like 
a  walking  blacksmith-shop.  The  door 
flings  open,  and  in  steps  the  valiant  knight, 
Sir  Godfrey  de  Newcomb  from  Sacra- 
mento, He  takes  off  his  iron  overcoat  and 
hangs  it  on  the  hatstand  in  the  hall ;  he  puts 
his  iron  umbrella  in  a  corner;  he  blows  his 
nose  with  an  iron  handkerchief.  With 
sounding  step  and  clanking  armor  he  strides 


THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL.  I2J 

into  the  banquet-hall,  gazes  around  him, 
and  his  proud  eye  meets  the  eye  of  Sir 
Walter  de  Mestayer  Sir  Godfrey  de  New- 
comb  deliberately  pulls  off  one  of  his  iron 
gauntlets  and  flings  it  on  Sir  Walter's  pet 
corn.  A  wild  combat  ensues.  Sir  Godfrey 
fells  Sir  Walter  to  the  ground,  he  puts  his 
knee  to  Sir  Walter's  chest,  his  poniard  to 
his  throat,  and  bids  him  to  acknowledge  that 
Sir  Godfrey  de  Newcomb's  lady  love  is  the 
greatest  beauty  of  all  ages  and  countries. 
Sir  Walter  pleads  that  he  has  not  the  ad- 
vantage of  a  personal  acquaintance,  never 
having  been  introduced;  but  Sir  Godfrey 
tickles  his  throat  with  the  poniard,  and  Sir 
Walter  signs  the  certificate. 

Alas!  these  happy  days  are  gone  forever. 
The  age  of  iron  has  passed.  It  is  true  we 
have  in  this  country  considerable  brass  and 
steel — sometimes  more  than  is  agreeable  to 
taxpayers;  but  essentially  this  is  an  age  of 
flannel  and  underwear.  And  still  the  age  of 
iron  has  not  passed  away  entirely;  it  sur- 
vives in  one  form.  Don 't  be  afraid ;  I  do  not 


128          THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

refer  to  the  railroad.  In  our  time  it  is  not 
the  valiant  knight  who  wears  the  mail-coat 
over  his  garments ;  it  is  the  delicate  maiden 
who  wears  her  garments  over  concentric 
rings  of  iron,  yclept  a  crinoline.  The 
knight  wore  the  iron  rings  to  protect  his 
frame,  the  maiden  wears  them  to  correct 
her  frame  and  to  expand  parts  of  it  into  the 
proportions  required  by  an  age  of  taste  and 
refinement. 

But  not  only  the  body  expands  in  our 
century  by  concentrically  and  spirally  ar- 
ranged iron  implements ;  the  mind  expands 
as  well.  Look!  Here  is  the  iron  tool  [draw- 
ing a  crinoline]  which  makes  spiritual  com- 
fort accessible,  at  the  same  time,  in  its  spiral 
line,  the  emblem  of  all  spiritual  progress, 
which  since  thousands  of  years  prefers  the 
spiral  to  the  straight  line. 

In  hoc  signo  vinces. 


ANCIENT    BOHEMIANS. 

THE  wanderer  who  strives  to  gain  the 
glory-clad  peaks  of  Alpine  heights  turns 
round  at  certain  points  to  view  the  scenery 
of  the  valleys  through  which  he  has  passed 
on  his  road  to  the  mountain-side.  So  do 
we  Bohemian  wanderers.  We  also  have  the 
wise  custom  to  turn  round  at  the  end  of  a 
year  and  eye  the  past  with  the  eyes  of  the 
present.  Let  us  then  have  a  retrospect  as  it 
behooves  members  of  the  ancient  organiza- 
tion. 

The  first  traces  of  Bohemian  existence 
are  lost  in  the  dawn  of  prehistoric  times.  It 
seems  a  well-established  fact  that  at  the  time 
of  the  Lias  formation  Bohemians  did  not 
exist.  The  beautiful  creatures  whose  re- 
mains we  find  imbedded  in  the  Jura  lime- 
stone have  been  identified  by  modern  scien- 
tists as  species  of  pterodactylus,  and  it  was 
only  the  angel-like  wings  combined  with 


130          THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

bills  of  enormous  proportions  that  have  sug- 
gested to  the  older  school  the  idea  of  fossil- 
ized Bohemians. 

The  first  certain  traces  of  Bohemians  we 
find  in  some  highly  ornamented  sculptures 
in  the  Pyramids  of  Egypt.  The  artists  of 
that  remote  period  were  Bohemians,  and 
had  the  thoughtful  custom,  when  they  had  to 
represent  their  gods,  to  take  the  models  from 
their  Bohemian  brethren.  Of  course,  they 
always  selected  for  that  purpose  only  mem- 
bers of  characteristic  beauty  and  purity 
of  morals.  We  have  here  quite  a  gallery 
of  well-executed  copies  from  sculptures  of 
that  origin. 

Another  trace  of  prehistoric  Bohemian- 
ism  has  been  found  in  the  lacustrine  dwell- 
ings of  Switzerland  that  nowadays  excite 
the  curiosity  of  the  archaeologist  as  much  as 
the  shell-mounds  of  California.  In  the  re-, 
cesses  of  these  ancient  habitations,  together 
with  split  marrow-bones  of  the  mastodon, 
arrow-heads,  and  other  flint  implements, 
was  found  a  bill  for  monthly  rent  of  a 


THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL.  131 

lacustrine  cottage,  wrapped  round  a  cubic 
crystallization  of  fossil  Limburg  cheese  and 
not  receipted. 

In  the  same  rate  that  we  approach  his- 
toric times  the  evidences  of  Bohemian  ex- 
istence multiply.  You  all  have  a  vivid 
recollection  of  the  Greek  expedition  headed 
by  Jason  that  started  in  the  year  1690,  be- 
fore our  Christian  era,  for  the  gold  mines 
of  Colchis.  Most  of  the  Greek  heroes  of 
that  period  had  largely  invested  in  a  mine 
which  so  considerably  had  fleeced  them 
that  ever  afterwards  it  was  known  by  the 
name  of  the  "  Golden  Fleece."  Jason,  with 
the  other  heroes,  chartered  a  steam-tug, 
called  the  "Argo,"  and  went  for  ^Eetes,  the 
superintendent  of  said  mine  and  father  of 
a  most  accomplished  daughter,  by  name 
Medea,  who  was  a  great  astrologer  and 
fortune-teller.  The  word  "medium"  is  de- 
rived from  Medea.  Jason  tried  to  get  some 
points  out  of  her  and  succeeded  but  too  well. 
Each  hero  made  his  pile.  After  having 
sold  out,  they  returned  in  the  same  craft; 


132          THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

but  the  "Argo,"  overloaded  by  fortunes 
carelessly  stowed  away,  sprung  a  leak,  and  at 
her  arrival  at  lolkos  was  condemned  by  the 
naval  authorities  of  that  place.  So  they 
sold  the  old  ship  to  the  Government  of  the 
United  States  for  a  man-of-war  and  started 
a  paper. 

One  of  the  most  interesting  documents 
has  been  unearthed  by  Mr.  Schliemann,  so 
justly  celebrated  for  his  excavations  in  Asia 
Minor.  On  an  excursion  into  the  ancient 
kingdom  of  Bithynia  he  discovered  the  mon- 
ument that  marks  the  ashes  of  the  unfortu- 
nate Carthaginian,  Hannibal,  who,  on  his 
flight  from  the  Romans,  ended  his  luckless 
career  by  taking  poison.  Mr.  Schliemann 
published  a  translation  of  this  most  interest- 
ing inscription.  It  runs  thus : 


This  is  to  certify  that  General  Hannibal, 
a  native  of  Carthago,  came  to  his  death  by 
an  overdose  of  nitrate  of  strychnia;  admin- 
istered by  himself.  Nobody  to  blame. 

Dr.  SWAN,  Coroner. 


THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL.  133 

On  the  reverse  of  the  monument  were  in 
scribed  the  touching  words : 


COMMIT       NO       SUICIDE 


As  our  time  is  valuable,  I  have  to  stop 
here,  but  will  read  you  on  another  occasion 
the  second  volume  of  this  historic  work, 
which  contains  the  period  from  the  Roman 
King,  Numa  Pompilius,  to  the  Californian 
Senator,  Paul  Neumann. 


ON    TEMPERANCE. 

OF  all  the  innumerable  virtues  which  I 
am  constantly  practicing,  temperance  has 
always  been  my  pet;  and  for  good  reasons. 
St.  Origen,  one  of  the  highest  Bohemian  au- 
thorities, speaks  in  terms  of  profound  and 
just  indignation  of  a  sin  of  such  magnitude 
that  it  requires  two  to  commit  it.  Now  this 
sociable  and  otherwise  rather  agreeable  sin 
must  have  a  counterpart,  or  antagonist,  in 
some  double-barreled  virtue,  or  else  vice 
would  have  an  advantage  over  virtue  and 
would  be  more  perfect  than  virtue,  which 
is  absurd.  Looking  over  the  long  index  of 
virtues  practiced  in  this  Bohemian  congre- 
gation, I  find  temperance  the  virtue  and 
counterpart  of  the  social  sin  condemned  by 
St.  Origen,  because  we  never  commit  a  tem- 
perance without  inviting  a  friend.  Now, 


136          THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

my  beloved  brethren,  this  is  all  clear  and 
intelligible;  and,  theoretically,  temperance 
would  be  all  right,  if  it  were  not  for  the 
existence  of  serious  obstacles  and  grievous 
mistakes  in  regard  to  the  practice  of  the 
virtue. 

There  are  some  benighted  people  who 
mistake  total  abstinence  for  temperance. 
Temperance  is  moderation  in  all  things; 
total  abstinence  is  an  extreme,  and  as  such 
intemperance  in  its  worst  form,  because  it 
is  unnatural.  Temperance  is  the  territory 
that  separates  two  extremes.  Between  arc- 
tic ice  and  the  scorching  heat  of  the  tropics 
stretches  the  temperate  zone.  This  zone  is 
inhabited  by  the  most  temperate  nations — 
the  Americans,  the  Irish,  the  Dutch;  and 
this  is  not  the  only  circumstance  from 
which  it  received  its  name;  like  the  tem- 
perate zone,  temperance  is  the  intermediate 
state  between  total  abstinence  and  total 
intoxication. 

What  says  Horace,  that  great  authority 
of  our  Bohemian  church?  "Medium 


THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL.          137 

tenuere  beati,"  which,  literally  translated, 
means : 

Blessed  be  they  that  walk 

On  a  line  of  chalk 

Through  a  given  room  diagonally. 

There  is  another  even  more  serious  mis- 
take interfering  in  the  sacred  cause  of  tem- 
perance. There  exists  in  the  mind  of  many 
people  an  erroneous  impression  that  water 
is  the  most  temperate  beverage,  and,  I  am 
sorry  to  say,  there  are  fanatics  who  really 
use  it  as  such.  My  dear  brethren,  water  is 
really  a  very  useful  fluid.  It  was  created 
for  washing,  for  bathing  at  the  Midsummer 
High  Jinks,  for  the  sale  of  nautical  instru- 
ments, for  painting  in  water-color,  for  the 
construction  of  bridges,  and  last,  but  not 
least,  for  the  cleaning  of  bottles. 

We  have  here  in  this  town  a  microscop- 
ical society  whose  members  are  visible  to 
the  naked  eye  and  derive  their  name  from 
the  circumstance  that  they  look  into  glasses 
of  the  microscope.  Each  member  of  this 
society  will  state  that  each  drop  of  water 


138  THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

swarms  with  myriads  of  living  beings,  each 
provided  with  individuality  and  actively 
engaged  in  the  pursuit  of  happiness.  We 
also  have  here  a  society  to  promote  cruelty 
of  insects  to  man — no,  to  prevent  cruelty  to 
animals.  This  society  recognizes  two  rea- 
sons which  justify  the  taking  of  animal  life; 
but  under  no  circumstances  are  we  permit- 
ted to  inflict  tortures  on  living  beings;  and 
would  it  not  be  a  torture  for  these  myriads, 
engaged  in  the  pursuit  of  happiness,  to  be 
exposed  to  the  horrors  of  our  intestinal 
tube?  Before  swallowing  these  poor  aqua- 
tics we  have  to  kill  them,  in  as  mild  and 
pleasant  a  way  as  is  compatible  with  the 
process.  This  object  we  obtain  by  diluting 
the  water  with  alcohol,  a  method  agreeable 
to  both  parties  and  at  the  same  time  admin- 
istering spiritual  comfort.  Dr.  Swan,  who 
frequently  assisted  me  in  the  diluting  pro- 
cess and  aided  in  my  experiments,  has  seen 
through  a  microscope  of  2,675  horse-power 
the  microbes,  during  the  diluting  process, 
joyfully  clapping  their  hands  and  singing 


THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL.  139 

out:  "Death,  where  is  thy  sting?  Hell, 
where  is  thy  victory?"  which  means,  in  the 
language  of  microbes,  "We  won't  go  home 
till  morning." 


A  NEW   PHILOSOPHICAL   INSTRUMENT. 

I  WAS  very  much  at  a  loss  by  what  token 
I  could  show  my  friendship  on  such  a  fes- 
tive day.  Pondering  over  this  subject,  I  en- 
tered the  hall  of  our  Academy  of  Sciences, 
where  I  am  accustomed  to  take  at  regular 
intervals  my  semi-monthly  nap.  From  this 
I  was  startled  by  a  lecture  given  by  our 
learned  Professor  of  Meteorology,  who  de- 
veloped a  new  theory  of  heat  produced  by 
inverted  comic  action  of  irradiating  ether. 
He  accounted  for  the  length  of  day  in  sum- 
mer by  expansion.  The  day  is  in  summer 
expanded  by  heat,  and  contracts  in  winter 
even  beyond  its  natural  volume  by  the  ac- 
tion of  elasticity.  The  learned  Professor 
also  produced  a  philosophical  instrument 
uniting  in  itself  the  merits  of  thermometer, 
barometer,  aneroid,  theodolite,  corkscrew, 


142          THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

and  toothpick — very  useful  and  hereafter 
indispensable  to  the  traveling  scientist. 

You  may  ask  how  I  came  into  possession 
of  this  valuable  instrument.  I  borrowed  it 
for  an  indefinite  space  of  time.  This  is  my 
system,  but,  I  am  sorry  to  say,  practiced 
by  many  people  without  their  giving  me 
credit.  Before  I  hand  over  to  you  this  valu- 
able instrument  I  have  to  give  you  some  in- 
structions as  to  its  use. 

When  placed  outside  doors  in  a  promi- 
nent position,  this  instrument  will  indicate 
every  current  of  air  by  pointing  to  the  oppo- 
site direction.  As  our  temperature  is  regu- 
lated by  such  currents,  the  instrument  will 
act  as  a  thermometer. 

You  ascertain  the  amount  of  atmospheric 
water  by  the  circumstance  that  the  instru- 
ment gets  wet  when  it  rains.  By  a  simple 
algebraic  formula  you  will  find  abundantly 
the  inches  of  rain  fallen  during  the  season, 
and  a  fraction  that  perhaps  might  remain 
undissolved  you  may  donate  to  our  gran- 
gers, who  never  get  rain  enough,  or  distrib- 


THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL.  143 

ute  it  amongst  the  picnic  parties  that  at 
present  destroy  the  peace  of  mind  of  Harry 
Edwards  and  other  butterfly  catchers. 

You  all  know  the  difference  between  a 
meridian  and  a  clothes-line.  This  instru- 
ment, placed  on  a  meridian  on  the  point 
where  it  crosses  a  degree  of  latitude,  will 
show  the  exact  geographical  position  of  the 
locality  by  remaining  in  that  position. 

As  to  electric  tension  and  the  deviations 
of  the  magnetic  pole,  I  leave  it  to  your  own 
philosophical  mind  to  find  out  the  use  of 
the  instrument. 


EDUCATIONAL    METHODS. 

LITERATURE  is  the  expression  of  civiliza- 
tion; civilization  itself  the  product  of  edu- 
cation, and  education  the  result  of  certain 
demonstrations  a  posteriori  by  which  the 
juvenile  mind  is  propelled  on  the  path  of 
wisdom  and  science.  According  to  the  ori- 
gin of  the  material  which  is  brought  in 
contact  with  the  lower  end  of  the  spinal 
column,  we  distinguish  several  different 
circles  of  civilization,  which  at  the  same 
time  serve  as  types  to  peculiar  forms  of  liter- 
ature. All  the  material  used  for  educa- 
tional development  is  of  vegetable  origin, 
and  in  discussing  our  object  we  must  first 
separate  material  of  monocotyledonous 
growth  from  those  of  dicotyledonous. 

The  bamboo  (Bambusa  arundinacea, 
L.)  is  an  arborescent  grass,  and,  as  such,  a 


146          THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

contradiction  in  adjecto.  It  is  an  antedi- 
luvian type  nowadays,  only  to  be  met  with, 
together  with  analogous  organisms,  in  trop- 
ical countries  and  in  some  sequestered  cor- 
ners of  the  southern  hemisphere,  where  this 
vegetable  anachronism  has  not  found  pow- 
erful competitors  in  the  battle  of  life.  It 
is  the  true  emblem  and  image  of  the  mon- 
strosities and  inconsistencies  of  Chinese 
civilization,  whose  promoter  the  bamboo 
has  been  for  one  thousand  years. 

The  rattan  (Calamus  Rotang)  possesses 
considerable  advantages  in  its  civilizing 
power.  It  is  a  palm-tree,  scarcely  an  inch 
thick,  but  sometimes  more  than  four  hun- 
dred feet  high,  or  rather  long,  leaning  on 
other  trees  and  supported  by  brush-wood. 
The  rattan  is  the  promoter  of  Hindoo  civ- 
ilization, and  that  most  extensive  epic  poem, 
the  Mahabharata,  is  the  true  picture  of  a 
palm-tree  four  hundred  feet  long  and  only 
one  inch  thick. 

We  will  now  proceed  to  the  higher  types 
of  civilization  produced  by  a  quickly  re- 


THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL.  147 

peated  external  application  of  dicotyledon- 
ous growth.  There  are  two  trees  nearly 
equally  productive  of  humanitarian  prin- 
ciples— the  hazel  and  the  birch. 

The  hazel  (Corylus  avellana,  L.)  has  its 
sway  in  southern  and  eastern  Europe,  where 
the  Mecklenburg  government,  in  its  pater- 
nal care  for  the  welfare  of  its  subjects,  pre- 
scribes by  law  the  length  and  circumference 
of  the  hazel  used  for  civilizing  purposes. 
Austria  employs  this  medium  chiefly  for 
military  education  and  owes  to  it  most  of 
its  victories.  It  is  the  hazel  which  infuses 
patriotism  into  an  army  otherwise  divided 
by  race,  language,  and  interest.  In  hoc 
signo  vinces  is  the  motto  of  the  Austrian 
hazel,  and  it  is  under  the  holy  hazel-tree 
that  Slavonian,  Hungarian,  Roumanian, 
crowd  and  fight. 

The  birch  is  the  originator  of  Anglo- 
Saxon  civilization  and  the  kindred  types  of 
Scandinavian  and  German.  Its  eastern 
boundary  is  the  Elbe  River,  where  the 
realm  of  the  hazel  begins.  Being  born  near 


148          THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

this  river,  I  have  enjoyed  the  advantages  of 
both  educational  systems.  I  have  been  laid 
low  under  the  hazel  and  have  writhed  un- 
der the  stimulating  influences  of  the  birch- 
rod.  The  hazel  has  its  advantages,  but  for 
classical  education  the  birch  always  has 
been  preferred.  In  fact,  I  consider  this 
tree  indispensable;  and,  furthermore,  I  am 
convinced  that  without  its  demonstrations 
a  posteriori  nobody  ever  can  master  the  ir- 
regular verbs.  To  me  it  always  was  one  of 
the  inexplicable  mysteries  of  ancient  history 
how,  without  the  assistance  of  this  useful 
tree,  the  Romans  ever  could  have  learned 
Latin.  It  is  evident,  however,  that  in  the 
essential  points  their  method  of  imparting 
knowledge  did  not  differ  materially  from 
ours;  the  name  of  their  celebrated  and 
still  consulted  lawbook,  Podex  J  ustinianceus , 
is  one  of  the  many  proofs  of  this  circum- 
stance. 

There  arises  now  the  question  which 
plant  will  be  the  emblem  and  promoter  of 
the  civilization  springing  up  from  this  new 


THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL.  149 

center  on  the  Pacific,  of  this  literature  born 
in  our  midst,  whose  juvenile  pranks  and 
freaks  we  are  enjoying  so  frequently  in  these 
rooms,  and  whose  manly  strength  and 
power  we  like  to  paint  in  anticipation.  The 
coniferous  trees  of  our  mountains  do  not 
yield  educational  material.  The  ruling 
vegetation  of  our  plains  is  tarweed  and  wild 
mustard.  The  tarweed  is  quite  out  of  the 
question,  for  it  has  no  civilizing  power.  As 
to  the  wild  mustard,  its  substance  is  too 
brittle  to  produce  any  impression  on  the 
organs  by  which  we  influence  the  juvenile 
mind.  It  is  not  the  raw  material,  not  the 
body  of  the  mustard  which  acts  on  the 
human  mind;  no,  it  is  its  soul  which  acts  on 
the  human  soul.  By  careful  and  judicious 
experimenting,  the  celebrated  pedagogue, 
McCracken  Bungletoe,  has  demonstrated 
how  the  most  beneficial  results  may  be  ob- 
tained by  squeezing  the  seeds  of  the  mustard 
plant,  adding  warm  water,  and  applying 
the  mass  obtained  in  this  way  on  the  same 
region  of  the  human  body  on  which,  accord- 


150          THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

ing  to  the  now  obsolete  methods,  bamboo, 
rattan,  hazel,  and  birch  were  applied. 

So  a  benevolent  nature  has  provided 
ample  means  for  the  promotion  of  Califor- 
nia literature,  and  the  method  to  utilize  our 
vegetable  resources  has  been  discovered  by 
the  scientifically  trained  mind  of  a  true 
philosopher. 


IMMORAL    PHILOSOPHY. 

MOST  GRACIOUS  SIRE  AND  DEARLY  BE- 
LOVED BOHEMIAN  BRETHREN:  Through 
the  whole  year  I  have  looked  forward  to 
this  day.  I  have  collected  most  carefully 
every  fact  connected  with  Bohemian  pro- 
gress and  goodness,  and  now  I  am  here  to 
give  you  all  the  important  discoveries  of  our 
last  year.  It  is  true  the  new  vice  so  long 
sought  for  is  not  yet  discovered,  but  that  is 
not  my  fault,  nor  is  it  owing  to  the  neglect 
of  any  other  member  of  this  organization. 
On  the  other  hand,  we  have  made  the  most 
astonishing  progress  in  immoral  philoso- 
phy. 

You  all  recollect  the  important  discovery 
made  by  our  brother  Daniel  O'Connell, 
who,  having  found  out  that  the  present  sys- 
tem by  which  everybody  confesses  his  own 


152          THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

sins  does  not  work  well,  improved  the  in- 
stitution of  confession  by  the  amendment 
that  henceforth  everybody  confess  the  sins 
of  his  brother.  Especially  among  the 
sisters,  this  improved  form  of  confession  has 
worked  wonders,  and  some  of  the  sisters 
have  not  stopped  confessing  from  the  mo- 
ment when  the  amendment  of  our  virtu- 
ous friend,  by  Bohemian  authority,  was 
adopted. 

I  now  come  to  record  another  great  dis- 
covery in  immoral  philosophy  made  by  our 
great  brother  in  the  interest  of  Truth. 
Having  observed  that  the  present  system  of 
questioning  witnesses  and  experts  under 
oath  is  a  frequent  source  of  that  most  hei- 
nous of  crimes,  perjury;  and  having  at  the 
same  time  discovered  by  many  experiments, 
carefully  conducted  by  himself,  that  in  bet- 
ting people  are  universally  conscientious 
and  always  bet  only  on  what  they,  by  their 
best  knowledge,  consider  true,  our  Bohe- 
mian brother  proposes  that,  instead  of  tak- 
ing the  oath,  the  said  witness  or  expert  enters 


THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL.  153 

a  bet  at  a  reasonable  amount,  sufficient  to 
protect  his  veracity.  The  advantages  of  this 
system  are  numerous  and  evident: 

1.  It  protects  the  sacredness  of  the  oath, 
which  ought  not  to  be  defiled  for  worldly 
considerations.     The  oath  has  to  be  used 
partly  as  a  punctuation  and  partly  as  an  ex- 
pletive.   In  both  capacities  the  oath  belongs 
to  grammar,  not  to  law. 

2.  Oaths,  as  we  all  know,  are  recorded 
in   heaven,   and   our   system,   by  which   a 
notary  public  simply  enters  a  note  referring 
to  the  bet,  saves  a  world  of  trouble  to  the 
recording  angel,  who  now,  besides  his  office 
duties,  may  attend  to  other  matters;  for  in- 
stance, may  attend  lectures  on  obstetrics,  or 
study  law;  so  that,  in  case  of  a  change  in 
celestial  politics  he  were  to  lose  his  office, 
he  could  make  his  living,  without  becoming 
a  terror  to  the  free-lunch  system. 

3.  There  will  be  considerably  more  so- 
lemnity in  the  proceeding  and  a  powerful 
laconism  if,  instead  of  the  common  phrase 
"I  solemnly  swear  to  speak  the  truth  and 


154        THE   HOOT   OF   THE   OWL- 
nothing  but  the  truth,  so  help  me  God  four 
bits,"  the  Judge  simply  but  emphatically 
says,  "You  bet." 

I  could  mention  here  a  great  many  other 
advantages  resulting  from  this  most  valu- 
able suggestion  of  our  distinguished  brother, 
Daniel  O'Connell,  but  it  would  be  like 
carrying  owls  to  Athens.  I  only  take  this 
opportunity  to  point  out  the  folly  of  import- 
ing a  Professor  of  Moral  Philosophy  from  a 
far-off  land  when  we  have  in  our  own  midst 
moral  philosophers  and  great  minds  like 
our  brother — as  you  see,  without  any  ap- 
propriation. Now,  you  may  imagine  what 
moral  giants  we  would  have  raised  if  a 
pure-minded  Legislature  had  voted  an  ap- 
propriation for  a  public  inspector  of  morals, 
a  deputy,  and  county  officers  of  moral  phil- 
osophy. 

It  is  true  our  California  climate  has  lately 
been  injured  by  too  many  brass  bands  in  the 
streets  of  San  Francisco,  but  the  virgin  soil 
of  California  is  still  capable  of  producing 
any  crop  desirable  to  an  enlightened  com- 


THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL.  155 

munity.  We  raise  any  kind  of  scientist, 
from  the  practical  miner  up  to  the  professor 
of  surgical  music  or  medical  ethics,  by 
simply  putting  on  California  soil  the 
manure  of  an  appropriation.  Just  as  the 
mushroom  in  its  natural,  uncanned  state 
springs  from  the  dung  left  by  benevolent 
cattle  on  an  otherwise  barren  field,  so  by 
forming  a  little  dunghill  we  can  raise  any 
variety  of  the  practical  miner  and  granger 
scientist. 

Brother  Daniel  O'Connell  at  the  Low 
Jinks  will  lay  before  you  a  petition  to  our 
coming  Legislature  where  you  are  to  sign 
your  name,  each  with  the  mention  of  a  small 
sum  to  be  utilized  to  act  on  the  pure  minds 
and  giant  intellects  of  our  legislators. 


THE    BACHELOR. 

THE  BACHELOR  (Homo  Caelebs]  is 
chiefly  found  in  the  temperate  zone,  but  not 
always  of  temperate  habits.  Most  of  the 
specimens  live  in  clubs  and  look  very  much 
like  the  common  species  (homo  pater  famil- 
ias),  from  which,  in  many  instances,  he  can 
only  be  distinguished  by  his  habit  of  keep- 
ing late  hours — up  to  the  dawn  of  morning 
—when  he  tries  to  make  a  face  as  if  he  had 
his  coffee  and  to  talk  early  piety. 

In  the  first  stage  of  his  existence  it  is  im- 
possible to  distinguish  the  bachelor  from  the 
common  species.  He  spells,  studies  gram- 
mar, crams  big  words  without  knowing  their 
meaning — like  ordinary  mortals.  He  fights 
indiscriminately  with  his  own  species,  burns 
firecrackers  on  the  Fourth  of  July,  falls  in 
love;  but  here  is  an  essential  difference — 


158          THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

he  marries  not  one  of  his  many  first  loves. 
Only  when  podagra  or  old  age  prevents  him 
from  going  to  the  club,  and  he  thus  falls  into 
a  state  of  general  demoralization,  he  flies 
sometimes  to  matrimony;  but  even  then  he 
does  not  marry,  but  is  married. 

During  the  time  of  his  full  vigor  the 
bachelor  gradually  adopts  the  habits  of  the 
so-called  regular  life.  He  is  an  admirer  of 
the  sunrise,  but  is  not  an  early  riser  himself. 
He  admires  the  rise  of  the  sun  in  going 
home  or  in  stopping  at  a  lamp-post,  in  whose 
embrace  he  sometimes  apostrophizes  the 
luminary  of  the  young  day,  calling  him 
Helios,  Phoebus,  and  other  bad  names.  The 
bachelor  takes  his  coffee  in  bed;  he  then 
spends  some  time  in  arranging  his  locks  in 
a  peculiar  economical  way  by  making  a 
small  number  of  hairs  go  very  far  to 
cover  a  great  surface  of  shining  epidermis. 
In  a  later  stage  of  his  development  this  care 
is  abandoned  for  the  possession  of  a  wig,  and 
so  for  the  morning  hours  remains  only  the 
sacred  duty  to  communicate  by  rubbing  the 


THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL.  159 

skull,  by  means  of  a  silken  handkerchief,  to 
a  higher  degree  of  polish,  which  neverthe- 
less is  modestly  hidden  under  the  wig  when 
steps,  especially  those  of  a  lady,  are  heard 
approaching  the  sanctum.  The  rest  of  the 
day  is  divided  into  two  sections  by  the  din- 
ner, which  performance  is  regularly  and 
religiously  attended  to  by  every  good 
bachelor. 

The  other  sex  of  the  bachelor  is  not  yet 
discovered.  There  exists  no  female  bach- 
elor. Some  biologists  have  supposed  that 
the  old  maiden  is  a  female  bachelor  in  dis- 
guise. This  is  a  dangerous  and  at  the  same 
time  absurd  error.  There  is  a  law  of  at- 
traction, also  called  natural  selection,  per- 
vading all  sexual  creation.  But  the  bach- 
elor, instead  of  being  attracted,  runs  away 
from  the  old  maiden;  at  the  same  time  he 
proves  by  such  action  that  with  all  her  ef- 
forts she  cannot  be  his  natural  mate.  It  is  an 
error  to  consider  the  old  maiden  distinct 
from  the  species  homo,  because  she  would  be 
the  usual  female  of  the  species  if  she  had 


160          THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

not  been  prevented  to  be  so  by  circumstances 
over  which  she  had  no  control ;  so  her  de- 
velopment became  arrested  and  she  re- 
mained in  a  kind  of  larval  state. 

In  the  later  part  of  his  existence  the  bach- 
elor becomes  an  uncle.  There  is  still  some 
mystery  about  the  propagation  of  the  bach- 
elor. Some  scientists  pretend  that  he  propa- 
gates by  eggs,  which  he  lays,  like  the  cuckoo 
of  Europe,  in  other  birds'  nests.  Others 
have  observed  that  he  propagates  by  a  bio- 
logical process  called  generatio  tequivoca. 
At  any  rate,  may  the  process  take  the  one 
form  or  the  other,  his  offspring  is  called 
"  nephew."  Of  this  commodity  he  generally 
possesses  only  one,  to  whom  he  delivers 
moral  lectures  in  the  morning  and  pays  the 
debts  after  dinner.  And  the  accomplish- 
ment of  these  two  objects  is  the  task  which 
fills  the  later  part  of  his  existence  and  for 
which  he  has  been  especially  created, 
namely,  paying  the  debts  of  his  nephew  and 
trying  to  improve  morals  which  do  not 
exist. 


LOVE. 

WHEN  our  most  gracious  Sire  ordered  me 
to  enlighten  you  on  the  subject  of  love,  he 
gave  another  proof  of  that  giant  intellect 
which  is  the  admiration  and  astonishment  of 
all  who  know  him,  for  there  are  few  people 
who  have  experimented  on  this  subject  so 
extensively  as  myself;  and,  as  I  have  care- 
fully concealed  my  profound  knowledge,  he 
must  have  learned  my  secret  by  that  species 
of  second-sight  which  belongs  to  a  great 
genius. 

As  love  is  a  matter  of  great  antiquity  and 
the  discussion  of  it  will  occupy  more  than 
one  evening,  I  have  found  it  necessary  to 
arrange  it  under  three  heads: 

I.  Love,  from  a  metaphysical  point  of 
view. 

II.  Love,  from  a  physical  point  of  view. 


1 62          THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

III.  Love,  from  the  point  of  moral  phil- 
osophy, or,  to  express  it  in  the  elegant  lan- 
guage of  a  prominent  clergyman,  "after 
jumping  from  crag  to  crag  to  the  Alpine 
heights  of  vital  existence,  taking  a  bird's-eye 
view  of  moral  responsibilities." 

When  we  analyze  the  idea  of  love  meta- 
physically, four  possibilities  present  them- 
selves to  us:  Love  may  be  active,  passive,  re- 
flective, or — and  this  is  the  most  agreeable — 
reciprocal,  which  latter  form  is  also  called 
"mutual  affection."  To  love  actively  and 
not  to  be  loved  is  very  distressing,  but  the 
passive  without  the  active — that  is,  to  be 
loved  without  being  able  to  raise  a  corre- 
sponding affection — is  even  more  awk- 
ward. The  reflective  form  of  love  is  the 
one  most  frequently  found,  for  everybody 
loves  himself  tenderly  and  considers  him- 
self a  nice  fellow.  I  can  even  see  in  this 
congregation  some  members  who  rejoice  in 
the  reflection  that  they  are  lovely  and 
charming. 

Love  also  has  a  present  tense  and  a  past. 


THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL.  163 

Present  love  is  easily  explained ;  in  fact,  un- 
der most  circumstances  we  cannot  under- 
stand how  it  is  possible  not  to  be  in  love. 
Past  love  is  just  the  reverse — we  cannot 
be  made  to  understand  how  we  ever  could 
have  been  in  love;  and  it  is  one  of  the  most 
convincing  proofs  of  the  wisdom  of  an 
overruling  Providence  that,  notwithstand- 
ing our  desperate  efforts,  we  never  succeed 
in  marrying  our  first  love,  who  is  most  fre- 
quently a  circus-rider,  a  milliner's  girl,  or 
the  wax  doll  in  the  show-window  of  a  hair- 
dresser. If  I  had  been  compelled  to  marry 
all  my  first  loves,  I  would  have  died  by  in- 
termittent suicide.  Past  love,  if  not  recip- 
rocally past — that  is,  if  the  other  party 
persists  in  being  in  love — may  become  very 
inconvenient,  but  I  have  found  an  effectual 
remedy, — namely,  write  to  the  lady  the 
following  letter:  "Miss  Brown,  Smith,  or 
Flanagan  [never  Nettie,  Fannie,  or  Addie; 
that  spoils  the  whole  effect]  :  Do  not  try  to 
explain;  I  know  all."  Now,  you  under- 
stand, there  is  ahvays  something  to  know, 


164          THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

and  a  lady  must  be  very  hardened  in  love 
if  after  such  a  statement  she  seeks  an  inter- 
view. I  intend  to  take  out  a  patent  on  this 
prescription,  which  I  call  the  Palaeroto- 
phylaktikon,  and  collect  a  royalty  from  all 
those  who  will  use  it;  none  genuine  unless 
spelled  with  a  K.  Do  not  infringe  on  the 
patent,  and  beware  of  imitations. 

Love  from  a  physical  point  of  view  is  not 
the  exclusive  property  of  mankind;  it  be- 
longs to  the  whole  organic  world.  Even 
plants  love,  and  flowers  communicate  their 
feelings  by  winds  and  insects.  Linnaeus 
founded  his  system  of  botany  entirely  on 
the  relations  between  male  and  female 
flowers.  Modern  scientists  have  considered 
this  very  improper,  and  have  introduced 
instead  the  words  "pistillate"  and  "stami- 
nate,"  so  that  even  the  pistillate  Bostonian 
may  now  study  the  science  of  flowers  with- 
out blushing.  Old  Linne,  in  his  blunt  way, 
said:  "The  pollen  is  carried  to  the  stigma 
by  the  agency  of  insects  visiting  for  the 
sake  of  the  nectar."  Modern  text-books  let 


THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL.  165 

us  down  gently,  as  follows:  "The  kisses  of 
the  staminate  flower  are  carried  to  the  re- 
productive organs  of  the  pistillate  flower 
on  the  purple  wings  of  the  butterfly,  which 
for  this  service  is  offered  a  sip  of  nectar  on 
the  bosom  of  the  latter."  This  is  decidedly 
more  aesthetic  than  the  old  version,  but  less 
intelligible;  it  is  very  chaste,  but  not  quite 
true.  In  the  animal  kingdom  we  retain  as 
yet  the  old  expressions  for  sexual  differ- 
ences. We  have  even  in  regard  to  our  own 
species  kept  the  old  suggestive  pronouns 
he  and  she,  and  also  in  regard  to  animals  of 
lower  grade  there  is  still  great  room  for 
improvement.  At  present  we  say,  for  in- 
stance, a  bull  and  a  cow,  and  do  not  call  the 
bull  a  staminate  cow. 

I  now  come  to  the  third  part  of  my  lec- 
ture— the  moral  philosophy  of  love.  The 
duties  of  social  life  oblige  us  occasionally 
to  commit  evening  calls.  On  such  occa- 
sions make  it  a  point  to  call  before  eight 
o'clock.  Scarcely  have  you  touched  the 
bell-handle,  when  the  door  is  flung  open 


1 66          THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

and  in  the  entrance  stands  Bridget,  smiling 
all  over  and  with  arms  lifted  for  an  em- 
brace; but  the  smiles  disappear,  the  up- 
lifted arms  sink  down,  and  a  moment  later 
nothing  is  visible  but  a  distant  view  of 
Bridget's  indignant  back,  for  you  are  not 
one  of  her  numerous  relations,  and  the  pis- 
tillate Irishman  expects  a  staminate  cousin, 
not  the  purple-nosed  butterfly  which  soars 
on  golden  wings  to  sip  nectar  and  water  on 
the  bosom  of  the  parlor  table.  Therefore, 
if  you  do  not  want  to  wait  on  the  doorstep, 
ring  the  bell  while  the  cousin  is  still  ex- 
pected. I  consider  it  my  sacred  duty  to 
correct  here  a  dangerous  error  in  regard  to 
the  moral  philosophy  of  love.  There  exists 
a  tradition,  propagated  from  generation  to 
generation,  that  there  is  an  inverse  ratio  as 
to  the  callings  of  the  heart  and  those  of  the 
stomach,  or,  to  speak  more  plainly,  that 
love  diminishes  the  appetite.  Now,  my 
Bohemian  brethren,  there  is  perhaps  not 
one  amongst  us  who  has  not  been  thrown  in 
profound  admiration  at  seeing  the  object 


THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL.  167 

of  his  heart's  dearest  hopes  eat  through  the 
whole  bill  of  fare  at  the  Poodle  Dog,  from 
Baltimore  oysters  to  cheese  and  black 
coffee.  Love  has  but  little  influence  over 
the  organs  of  digestion.  I  have  observed 
in  a  few  cases  (in  friends)  a  momentary 
reduction  in  drinks;  but  whether  their 
affection  was  accepted  or  blighted,  the 
number  of  drinks  very  soon  again  reached 
a  reasonable  figure. 

And  now  for  the  moral:  Combine  the 
physics  and  metaphysics,  and  never  lose 
sight  of  the  fact  that  the  object  of  your  af- 
fections possesses,  besides  a  loving  heart,  a 
sound  and  active  stomach. 


THANKSGIVING    DAY. 

WHEN  I  first  heard  of  the  celebration  of 
Thanksgiving  Day  I  was  seized  with  an 
irresistible  desire  to  contribute  to  the  fes- 
tivities. Pondering  over  this  subject,  a 
thought  struck  me  that  a  most  appropriate 
exercise  on  such  an  occasion  would  be  a 
botanical  lecture;  for  such  a  lecture  will 
not  only  produce  in  the  time  of  its  duration 
that  state  of  somnolence  called  solemnity, 
but  when  finished  give  a  lively  feeling  of 
satisfaction  that  can  only  be  compared  to 
the  internal  bliss  felt  by  a  pointer  who  has 
been  whipped  through  a  course  of  educa- 
tion and  is  conscious  of  the  fact  that  there 
is  a  vacation  of  twenty-four  hours  till  the 
next  spinal  irritation. 

The  object  of  this  botanical  lecture  is  the 
pumpkin,  and  its  position,  according  to  the 


170          THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

natural  system,  adopted  by  our  most  gra- 
cious Sire.  The  lecture  will  be  contained 
in  two  parts.  The  first  will  be  so  scientific 
that  none  of  you  will  understand  it;  the  sec- 
ond, which  is  the  most  interesting,  so  pro- 
found that  it  is  not  understood  by  myself. 

The  pumpkin  belongs  to  the  natural  or- 
der of  Gucurbitacea,  a  family  of  doubtful 
affinities.  According  to  the  immortal  Lin- 
naeus, who  invented  the  sexual  system  (for 
before  him  we  all  propagated  by  generatio 
cequivoca),  the  Cucurbitacece  belong  to  the 
order  Moncecia.  This  name  is  derived 
from  monos,  single,  and  oicos,  house,  and 
means  two  beds  in  one  house — an  arrange- 
ment somewhat  favorable  to  matrimonial 
bliss. 

The  pumpkin  also  belongs  to  the  Phane- 
rogams, which  propagate,  according  to  a 
well-established  law,  without  any  mystery 
or  secret  relations.  Not  so  the  Crypto- 
gams, whose  ways  are  dark,  arbitrary,  and 
without  the  rule  of  an  established  law. 
They  have  different  modes.  The  first  of 


THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL.  171 

them  is  by  division,  as,  for  instance,  the 
bacteria;  that  is,  an  individual  splits  in 
two,  each  of  the  halves  in  a  minute's  time 
being  ready  for  a  new  division.  For  ex- 
ample, if  our  most  gracious  Sire  would 
adopt  this  method  of  propagation,  in  the 
time  of  five  minutes  this  hall  would  contain 
thirty-two  Sires,  and  in  an  hour  the  Pacific 
Coast  would  swarm  with  Sires,  a  circum- 
stance that  would  benefit  immensely  the 
Bohemian  Club,  but  would  be  a  serious 
calamity  to  the  medical  profession. 

It  is  not  my  intention  to  mention  all  the 
different  methods  of  cryptogamic  propa- 
gation, for  I  always  have  striven  to  protect 
the  morals  of  our  organization.  I  will  only 
refer  here  to  the  higher  Cryptogams,  that 
are  no  more  a  mere  compound  of  cells,  but 
possess  spiral  vessels,  vessels  that  open  by 
a  spiral  corresponding  to  the  spiral  ar- 
rangement called  by  us  "corkscrew." 
These  plants  possess  alternating  genera- 
tions, an  arrangement  called  dimorphisms, 
from  two  Greek  words — di,  double,  and 


172          THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

morphy,  which  means  an  Irishman;  for  all 
great  scientific  discoveries  have  been  made 
by  the  Irish  nation,  with  the  sole  exception 
of  the  conifers,  which  were  discovered  by 
the  conic  section  of  the  Hebrew  race.  In 
regard  to  the  systematical  position  of  the 
pumpkin,  I  think  the  place  assigned  to  it 
by  our  most  gracious  Sire  is  the  most  hon- 
orable it  can  ever  occupy. 


ON   TRUTH. 

THE  real  Queen  of  Bohemia  is  Truth. 
She  is  worshiped  by  our  literati,  admired 
by  our  penny-a-liners,  imitated  by  our  ar- 
tists, and  praised  by  me.  Yes,  Truth  has  the 
great  prerogative  to  be  praised  by  me,  for 
my  specialty  is  morals. 

On  previous  occasions  I  have  lectured  on 
Virtue.  My  success  was  greater  than  de- 
sirable. With  some  friends  the  progress  on 
the  path  of  virtue  was  too  rapid,  according 
to  my  taste — some  short-winded  members 
of  the  congregation  that  wanted  to  keep  up 
with  the  race  and  could  not  have  seriously 
injured  their  constitutions.  But  if  our 
worthy  Sire  will  take  all  responsibility  on 
his  own  venerable  head,  I  am  ready  to 
cause  another  stampede;  only  I  will  use 
the  precaution  to  discuss  Virtue  not  in  her 


174          THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

totality,  but  to  divide  the  object,  which 
medical  men  call  don  refracta,  in  which 
form  Virtue  is  less  dangerous. 

The  object  of  our  present  contemplation 
is  the  beauties  of  Truth.  Truth,  also  called 
veracity,  in  spelling  matches  sometimes 
voracity,  which  means  another  virtue,  was 
called  Veritas  by  the  Romans,  and  was 
worshiped  in  a  temple  near  the  Via  Appia. 
This  temple  does  not  front  the  street. 
Truth  frequently  is  hidden.  The  entrance 
to  the  temple  of  Truth  is  through  an  ad- 
jacent saloon,  from  which  circumstance  the 
Latin  saying,  In  vino  veritas,  derives  its 
origin.  Once  I  had  to  see  a  friend  in  this 
saloon.  By  some  queer  coincidence  all  my 
friends  develop  a  most  remarkable  thirst 
for  Truth.  On  this  occasion  I  was  intro- 
duced to  the  high  priest  of  the  goddess, 
who,  after  having  bestowed  his  blessing 
and  distributed  spiritual  comfort  all 
around  him,  invited  me  to  a  private  re- 
vival in  the  innermost  recesses  of  the  sanc- 
tuary. Here  Truth  stood  on  a  pedestal, 


THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL.  175 

without  any  other  garment  but  a  looking- 
glass  in  her  hand.  "Is  this  Carrara 
marble?"  I  asked  the  holy  man.  "No,"  he 
said,  "it  is  papier-mache,  and  hollow  inside; 
but  does  she  not  look  like  Carrara  marble?" 
"  This  statue,"  the  holy  man  continued, 
"has  been  created  at  a  great  expense  by  the 
great  Greek  sculptor  Phidias,  after  a  pho- 
tograph taken  by  our  special  artist,  Bradley 
Rulofson.  There  was  but  little  difficulty 
for  the  sculptor,  but  a  world  of  trouble  for 
the  photographer.  I  never  have  seen  a 
deity  so  particular  about  retouching.  This 
peculiarity,  and  the  circumstance  of  her 
eyes  being  so  intensely  fixed  on  that  look- 
ing-glass, is  probably  the  reason  why  the 
Romans  consider  Truth  a  female  deity.  No 
male  deity  could  fix  his  eyes  for  such  a 
length  of  time  on  a  looking-glass,  not  even 
when  shaving.  It  probably  has  not  escaped 
your  experienced  eye  that  Truth  is  naked. 
Now,  to  you  and  me  that  matters  very 
little ;  many  a  time  we  have  seen  and  have 
heard  naked  Truth;  but  we  have  to  con- 


176          THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

sider  that  ladies,  although  but  rarely,  wor- 
ship in  this  temple.  We  therefore  every 
morning  dress  Truth  after  the  latest  fash- 
ion, the  garments  being  made  out  of  the 
daily  papers.  It  now  devolves  upon  me  to 
take  your  oath  that  you  will  never  divulge, 
always  conceal,  and  never  reveal  anything 
that  you  have  seen  or  heard  in  this  sanctu- 
ary." 

With  these  words  the  holy  man  pro- 
duced a  copy  of  Baron  Miinchhausen's 
Travels.  I  kissed  the  sacred  book  and 
swore  a  Custom-House  oath  that  I  will  re- 
member to  the  end  of  my  days.  But,  as  we 
are  here  amongst  friends  whose  capacity  to 
keep  secrets  is  proverbial,  I  will  tell  you 
all  about  it: 

Truth  has  very  little  charms ;  all  my  lady 
acquaintances  are  much  prettier.  Truth  is 
plain,  and,  strange  to  say,  she  calls  herself 
frequently  plain  Truth.  But  she  does  not 
mean  it. 

It  now  devolves  upon  me  to  draw  some 
moral  and  to  admonish  this  congregation. 


THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL.  177 

Search  for  Truth;  and  when  you  have 
found  her,  keep  her  for  yourselves.  When 
compelled  to  part  with  her,  dress  her  up 
pleasantly  and  after  the  day's  fashion,  and 
never  throw  that  pearl  to  your  husbands. 


LETTER  FROM  THE  BEAR  WHO   SWAM 

ACROSS  THE  GOLDEN  GATE  AND 

LANDED  AT  THE  PRESIDIO. 

SAN  FRANCISCO,  June  28,  1884. 

MY  DEAR  COUSIN:  Circumstances  over 
which  I  had  no  control  have  prevented  me 
from  paying  you  that  visit  planned  and  pre- 
meditated such  a  considerable  time.  The 
real  cause  of  the  long  dilation  was  an  inde- 
cision on  my  part  about  the  method  of  my 
travel.  It  would  have  been  against  my  prin- 
ciple to  travel  by  railroad,  because  under  no 
condition  would  I  encourage  the  heartless 
monopoly  of  the  Central  Pacific  Railroad; 
besides,  I  have  of  late  constantly  been  out 
of  cash  and  had  not  the  funds  necessary  to 
buy  my  ticket.  So  I  decided  to  swim  the 
Golden  Gate,  and  found,  when  I  landed 


180          THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

near  Fort  Point,  a  military  deputation 
ready  for  my  reception.  They  had  left 
their  muskets  home,  which  was  very  con- 
siderate of  them.  They  knew  that  since  my 
good  grandmother  was  killed  by  an  acci- 
dent with  firearms  my  nervous  system  has 
become  very  susceptible,  and  I  do  not  like 
to  hear  shooting. 

Unprepared  as  I  was,  I  was  neverthe- 
less up  to  the  occasion,  and  was  just  begin- 
ning a  speech,  when  they  retired  rather 
hastily;  probably  because  they  saw  that  I 
was  exhausted  by  the  long  swim  and  the 
exposure  of  my  system  to  undiluted  water, 
and  that  again  was  very  considerate  of 
them. 

I  found  the  country  very  much  changed 
since  my  last  visit.  On  my  way  to  the  city 
I  met  a  police  force  that  evidently  was  not 
so  friendly  disposed  as  the  military  depu- 
tation who  received  me  when  I  came  out  of 
the  water.  They  had  firearms,  and  you 
know  I  hate  the  sight  of  firearms.  Never- 
theless I  was  ready  to  surrender,  for  I  al- 


THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL.  l8l 

ways  have  been  a  good  citizen.  Not  for 
the  world  would  I  have  resisted  an  arrest 
made  by  a  superior,  well-armed  force,  as 
long  as  I  was  sober.  But  I  was  spared  the 
ignominy  of  a  public  arrest  by  the  inter- 
vention of  an  Italian  bootblack.  Scarce  had 
the  men  of  the  law  seen  the  bootblack  un- 
packing his  box  on  the  margin  of  a  sand-lot, 
when  they  turned  from  me  and  arrested 
the  Italian  for  blocking  up  the  sidewalk.  I 
was  very  much  pleased  with  the  promptness 
of  this  action,  for  I  always  liked  to  see  au- 
thorities doing  their  duty,  and  that  boot- 
black had  no  right  to  be  a  bootblack.  Why 
was  he  not  a  dry-goods  merchant,  and  he 
could  have  placed  as  many  boxes  on  the 
sidewalk  as  he  thought  fit;  or  that  auction- 
eer on  California  Street,  about  whose  fra- 
grant audience  you  complained  in  your  last 
letter  as  blocking  up  the  road  to  the  Acad- 
emy of  Sciences? 

You  know  that  I  always  longed  for  a 
position  in  a  zoological  garden.  In  looking 
round  for  an  institution  of  this  kind  to  be 


1 82          THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

whose  ornament  I  would  condescend,  I 
met  a  troop  of  men  in  common  citizens' 
garb,  but  each  of  them  walking  behind  a 
rifle  pointed  at  my  head.  As  I  was  certain 
that  these  men  would  not  fire  so  long  as  I 
was  near,  I  accosted  them  and  entered  into  a 
conversation.  They  were  very  pleasant,  but 
told  me  there  was  neither  a  zoological  nor  a 
botanical  garden  in  existence,  but  plenty  of 
beer-gardens  and  lunch  saloons;  there  was 
somewhere  over  the  water  a  kind  of  scien- 
tific institution,  but  I  never  could  be  ad- 
mitted there,  as  I  was  not  born  in  Massa- 
chusetts. Soon  after  I  had  thanked  them 
for  their  kindness  and  taken  leave,  I  heard 
several  shots  and  saw  four  big  holes  fired 
into  nature.  In  order  to  avoid  an  accident, 
I  withdrew  into  the  chaparral,  took  a  hasty 
breakfast  at  an  Italian  gardener's,  borrowed 
a  dish  of  veal  from  a  French  stockraiser, 
and  retired  for  the  sake  of  my  health  into 
the  wilderness  around  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin, 
where  the  great  number  of  Sunday  hunters 
have  created  a  climate  so  salubrious  that 


THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL.  183 

even  quail  and  snipes  grow  there  to  a  green 
old  age.  Yours  truly, 

P.  S.  There  has  been  a  report  in  the 
San  Francisco  newspapers  that  I  was  killed. 
Don't  believe  it.  It  is  an  old  trick.  When 
the  California  Legislature  in  the  year  '52 
put  a  price  on  the  head  of  Joaquin  Murieta, 
three  heads  of  said  Joaquin  were  handed  in 
and  paid  for;  and  as  Joaquin  is  still  alive,  it 
is  impossible  to  form  an  idea  of  how  many 
heads  he  could  have  furnished  since  then,  if 
the  payment  had  not  been  stopped.  The  old 
Californians  are  not  so  easily  killed. 


THE   MICROSCOPE. 

THE  microscope  is  an  implement  com- 
posed of  glass  and  brass.  The  brass  is  used 
in  two  different  preparations, — first,  in  its 
purely  metallic  shape;  secondly,  in  the 
shape  of  a  brass  band,  which  serves  to  make 
microscopical  demonstrations  more  intelli- 
gible and  prevents  conversation  with  a  lady 
neighbor.  Brass  was  discovered  in  the  age 
of  bronze  by  a  gentleman  named  Tubalcain. 
Particulars  can  be  found  in  the  sacred  rec- 
ords of  the  Patent  Office  at  Washington, 
where  his  name  is  mentioned  in  reference 
to  a  new  process. 

Glass  was  discovered  by  a  Phoenician 
Superintendent  of  Public  Streets,  who  spent 
considerable  time  in  experiments  to  find  for 
public  improvements  a  sufficiently  destruc- 


1 86          THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

tible  and  at  the  same  time  expensive  sub- 
stance. Modern  science  has  provided  our 
Superintendents  of  Streets  with  a  series  of 
more  pliable,  brittle,  and  costly  bodies;  but 
still  in  more  sequestered  localities  traces  of 
the  pavement  may  be  found  that  was  char- 
acteristic to  the  age  of  brass.  The  name  of 
this  Superintendent  of  Streets  was  Flana- 
gan Abu  Baker  ben  Snodgrass,  who  was 
born  at  Sodom  and  Gomorrah,  under  the 
reign  of  the  Egyptian  king,  Pharaoh 
Meyer. 

It  is  a  most  melancholy  fact  that  the  great 
man  after  having  discovered  glass  made  a 
too  free  use  of  glasses.  The  police  records 
of  Tyrus,  Sidon,  Antiocha,  and  Damascus 
show  his  name  on  every  page,  and  the  sta- 
tion-house of  Jerusalem  exhibits  still  his 
curious  and  interesting  autograph.  On  a 
stormy  night,  when  he  was  camping  out  at 
the  station-house  of  Tyrus,  rattlesnakes  got 
in  his  boots,  and  when  he  awoke  next  morn- 
ing he  found  he  was  dead.  So  this  man 
shared  the  fate  of  all  discoverers;  he  bene- 


THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL.  187 

fited  humanity,  left  an  immortal  name,  but 
died  himself. 

There  is  no  invention  that  has  had  the 
same  influence  on  spiritual  as  well  as  on 
material  welfare  of  mankind.  Before  glass 
came  into  use  no  looking-glass  ornamented 
the  walls  of  sleeping  apartments.  The 
consequence  was  that  the  ladies  could  not 
dress,  for  young  ladies  cannot  dress  with- 
out seeing  their  faces ;  they  had  to  repair  in 
deep  undress — in  fact,  barefoot  to  a  great 
extent — to  the  next  river,  lake,  brook,  or 
streamlet,  by  which  act  they  did  hurt  sorely 
every  morning  the  feelings  of  all  the  old 
maidens  and  shocked  very  much  the  whole 
male  population,  who,  by  some  unaccount- 
able coincidence,  collected  at  the  same  hour 
in  the  same  locality. 

But  glass  is  also  a  bulwark  of  free  insti- 
tutions. Some  thirty  years  ago,  when  I 
visited  the  Continent  to  barter  for  an 
honorable  degree  at  Giessen,  I  went  out  on 
a  clear  night  to  study  astronomy  with  the 
assistance  of  some  glasses  obtainable  at  a 


1 88  THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

saloon  round  the  corner.  Dark  shades  on 
one  side  of  the  street,  the  other  side  illumi- 
nated by  the  pale  spectral  light  of  the  full 
moon,  which  stood  high  over  the  steeple  of 
the  old  Gothic  church.  Here  I  stood  on  a 
Miocene  formation,  surrounded  by  playful 
trilobites,  on  the  very  spot  where  the  high- 
way of  wandering  nations  is  crossed  by  some 
meridian.  I  sank  into  deep  revery.  I  saw 
the  eagle  on  the  helmet  of  the  Gothic  chief. 
I  saw  the  dark,  heavy  Burgundian  on  his 
way  to  Barbary  Coast.  At  this  moment  my 
revery  was  interrupted  by  the  harmonic 
sound  of  broken  windows.  The  free  and 
independent  descendants  of  the  same  Goths 
and  Vandals  manifested  their  political  an- 
tipathies by  breaking  the  windows  of  the 
resident  officer  of  the  Government,  and 
they  broke  the  windows  of  all  the  inhabi- 
tants of  the  town.  By  this  delicate  and  ju- 
dicious proceeding  they  promoted  at  the 
same  time  political  progress  and  domestic 
happiness. 

The  glass  also  fosters  temperance;  for, 


THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL.  189 

if  we  had  no  glasses,  we  would  drink  out 
of  the  bottle. 

Now,  after  having  discussed  how  much 
humanity  has  been  benefited  by  brass  and 
glass,  the  component  parts  of  the  micro- 
scope, you  may  judge  for  yourself  how 
deeply  mankind  is  indebted  to  the  micro- 
scope itself. 


IN   THE   NAME    OF    THE    PROPHET. 

THE  text  of  our  present  contemplation  is 
found  in  our  sacred  book,  the  Koran,  where 
it  is  contained  in  the  impressive  words, 
"Kullu  meskirin  haram."  As  I  have  ob- 
served that  some  of  you  have  become  rather 
rusty  in  your  Arabic,  I  will  translate  it  for 
you.  It  means,  All  intoxicating  things  are 
forbidden.  There  are  some  heretics  who 
read  "hammam"  instead  of  "haram,"  so 
that  the  passage  would  be  "Kullu  meskirin 
hammam,"  which  would  mean,  All  intoxi- 
cating drinks  must  be  hot.  May  the  here- 
after of  such  heretics  be  hot! 

Now,  let  us  inquire  why  our  holy  prophet 
Mohammed — blessed  be  his  name! — pro- 
nounced these  hard  and  apparently  cruel 
words.  On  former  occasions  I  have  incul- 


192  THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

cated  into  your  minds  the  important  truth 
that  a  symmetrical  development  in  vice 
leads  to  a  blessed  life  in  the  terrestrial  ex- 
istence as  well  as  in  our  hereafter.  I  know 
by  my  own  experience  how  difficult  it  is 
to  practice  several  vices  successfully  at  the 
same  time.  Our  great  prophet,  therefore — • 
blessed  be  his  name! — has  arranged  matters 
in  a  way  that  we  derive  almost  the  same 
spiritual  benefit  by  practicing  them  one 
after  the  other.  As  I  have  done  on  former 
occasions,  I  will  give  you  the  benefit  of  my 
own  experience. 

I  began  my  moral  career  by  stealing 
apples.  Then  I  practiced  polygamy — or 
rather  tried  to  practice  it.  Then  I  culti- 
vated friendship  in  an  alcoholic  solution, 
and  here  I  place  myself  before  you  and  ask, 
What  next?  Now,  you  will  recollect  that 
the  rights  of  individuals  are  limited  by  the 
rights  of  the  nation,  and,  vice  versa,  the 
rights  of  the  nation  begin  where  the  privi- 
leges of  the  individual  end.  This  is  ex- 
actly the  case  in  regard  to  the  order  in  which 


THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL.  193 

the  different  vices  have  to  be  practiced;  it 
begins  in  the  human  race  where  it  ends  in 
the  individual.  Full  of  vital  vigor,  nations 
step  on  the  stage  of  history  and  ask,  What 
next?  Next  they  take  to  strong  drink  com- 
bined with  friendship,  then  they  introduce 
polygamy,  and  end  where  I  began — by 
stealing  apples. 

At  the  time  when  our  great  prophet — 
blessed  be  his  name! — preached  to  the  na- 
tions, all  Asia  Minor,  from  the  straits  of 
Bab  el  Mandeb  to  the  ports  of  the  Cau- 
casus, was  drunk  before  ten  o'clock  in  the 
morning.  What  says  the  great  Ibrahim  ben 
Bamboozel  Abu  Beker  ben  Smith?  No  true 
believer  is  expected  to  be  drunk  before 
eleven  o'clock  A.  M. 

Our  great  prophet  saw  immediately  that 
the  next  vice  was  in  order,  which  was,  un- 
der the  circumstances,  polygamy.  So,  my 
dear  brethren,  let  us  follow  the  teachings  of 
our  prophet — praised  be  his  name! — let  us 
stop  drinking  and  let  us  practice  polygamy. 
If  the  laws  of  the  country  prevent  us  from 


194          THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

doing  so  simultaneously,  let  us  practice  it 
consecutively,  and  let  us  all  join  in  the  pious 
exclamation : 

Allah  il  allah  we  Mohammed  resul  allah. 


THE    CHRISTMAS-TREE. 

IT  was  not  my  original  intention  to  in- 
flict this  lecture  on  you.  You  have  to  blame 
our  most  gracious  Sire  for  it,  who  insisted 
on  my  lecturing  to-night,  and  threatened,  in 
case  of  disobedience,  to  take  my  place,  as  he 
has  done  at  former  occasions.  To  save  you 
from  such  a  calamity,  I  have  complied  with 
his  wishes,  and  here  I  stand  a  victim  of  ill- 
directed  sense  of  duty. 

My  Bohemian  brethren,  if  you  consider 
that  the  day  which  we  celebrate  to-night,  or 
the  night  which  we  celebrate  to-day,  is  its 
1 887th  anniversary,  you  must  comprehend 
the  difficulty  of  saying  anything  that  has  not 
been  said  before.  It  is  my  custom  under 
such  circumstances  to  consult  my  spiritual 
adviser — Rev.  George  Bromley — to  whom 


196          THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

I  also  confess  semi-occasionally  the  sins  of 
a  brother. 

I  asked  him :  "About  what  shall  I  speak?" 

"  You  speak  about  five  minutes,"  the  pious 
man  answered;  but  noticing  the  melancholy 
expression  that  imparts  a  peculiar  charm  to 
my  features,  he  called  me  back  and  ad- 
dressed to  me  the  following  words  of  wis- 
dom: 

"You  fool,- — that  is  to  say,  my  son, — read 
to  us  one  of  the  papers  which  you  have  read 
before  at  the  meetings  of  the  California 
Academy  of  Sciences.  Nobody  will  notice 
the  difference,  and  besides  you  are  bound 
in  justice  to  do  so,  as  we  have  well  noticed 
how  frequently,  under  the  disguise  of  pro- 
found science,  you  have  inflicted  papers 
belonging  to  this  Bohemian  forum  upon  our 
unsuspecting  sister  organization." 

These  were  the  words  of  the  pious  man, 
and  I  went  immediately  to  the  hall  where  I 
keep  my  manuscripts,  took  a  drink,  and 
selected  from  the  treatises  on  trees  one  on 
the  Christmas-tree  and  its  botanical  and 


THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL.  197 

diplomatic  relations  to  turkey  and  cran- 
berry jelly. 

The  Christmas-tree  belongs  to  the  coni- 
fers,— that  is,  trees  which  bear  cones.  But 
it  is  not  always  that  they  bear  cones;  some 
of  the  members  present  will  convince  them- 
selves to-night  that  this  wonderful  tree  has 
the  power  to  bear  fruit  of  the  most  surpris- 
ing kind  and  character.  The  leaves  of  the 
tree  are  everlasting,  or  evergreen,  which  is 
the  symbol  of  persistent  innocence,  and  not 
intended  as  a  satire  or  allusion  to  the  amount 
of  innocence  accumulated  by  the  younger 
members.  The  stem  is  not  green,  but  never- 
theless everlasting,  as  it  will  sprout  out  after 
every  forest  fire,  and  even  escape  the  dangers 
of  the  "State  Commission  for  the  Preserva- 
tion of  Forests." 

After  the  new  year  the  tree  can  no  more 
be  used,  for  then  the  season  approaches 
when  our  forests  are  vaccinated,  to  protect 
them  against  phylloxera  and  rinderpest.  In 
spring  it  produces  flowers,  in  summer  pic- 
nics, and  ripens  its  fruit  at  Christmas. 


198          THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

Its  chief  occupation  is  to  attend  at  forest 
fires.  In  its  leisure  hours  it  protects  the 
springs  whose  waters  we  dilute  with 
whisky;  it  also  shades  the  tributaries  of  our 
water-works,  whose  contents  assist  and  con- 
tribute so  largely  to  our  collection  of  mi- 
croscopic animals.  The  same  tree  protects 
at  our  Midsummer  High  Jinks  the  wise  and 
venerable  head  of  the  old  Bohemian  and 
imparts  a  beautiful  green  bloom  of  persist- 
ent innocence  to  the  intelligent  face  of  the 
Bohemian  neophyte. 

So,  dear  Bohemian  brethren,  let  us  do 
homage  and  bow  to-night  reverently  before 
the  tree  that  shelters  our  midsummer  ser- 
vices and  enlightens  and  illuminates  the 
present  celebration. 


YULE. 

A  CELEBRATION  like  that  of  to-day  has 
always  a  tendency  to  recall  the  past.  It 
makes  us  look  back  into  our  own  bygone 
days  and  also  into  the  past  ages  of  our  race. 
So  let  us  then  date  back  the  present  night  for 
a  millennium  and  a  half,  and  let  us  imagine 
that  we  live  at  the  time  when  Constantine 
the  Great  ruled  at  Byzantium.  We  are  not 
Bohemians  to-night;  we  are  northern  barba- 
rians— Waraegians  that  fight  as  mercenary 
soldiers  for  the  Roman  Emperor,  Danes  that 
plunder  the  northern  coasts,  Normans  that 
invade  the  Mediterranean — and  led  by  our 
chieftains  Hengist  and  Horsa,  Angular  Sax- 
ons, who  found  corner  groceries. 

The  banquet  of  to-day  is  not  called 
Christmas;  its  name  is  Yule.  On  the  fire- 
place flames  the  yule-log,  the  sacred  em- 
blem of  the  god  Balder's  death.  Champions 


200          THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

and  warriors,  seated  on  benches,  occupy  two 
sides  of  a  long  table.  On  an  elevated  seat 
at  the  head  of  the  table  presides  the  bold 
Jarl.  The  whole  resembles  a  low  jinks.  On 
the  walls  lean  torch-bearing  serfs,  instead 
of  gas  flames  measured  by  cubic  feet. 
Horns  of  the  Urus  filled  with  mead  go  from 
hand  to  hand,  and  the  heroes  walk  up  where 
the  head  of  a  wild  boar  is  placed  before  the 
throne  of  the  powerful  Jarl. 

This  hall  forms  part  of  an  ancient  tower 
rising  on  a  cliff  that  overhangs  the  wild 
waves  of  the  German  Ocean,  not  the  Cali- 
fornia Market.  Looking  down  from  the 
stormy  height,  you  witness  the  eternal  war- 
fare waged  between  rock  and  wave.  The 
foot  of  the  cliff  is  surrounded  by  phospho- 
rescent breakers  like  this  block  by  the  fiery 
brokers.  On  the  head  of  the  wild  boar  the 
warriors  lay  their  hands  and  pronounce 
vows  according  to  ancient  rites.  In  solemn 
chorus  they  sing: 

u  No,  no,  we  will  never  get  drunk  any  more ! 
No,  no,"  etc.,  etc. 


THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL.  2OI 

The  impressive  ceremony  is  interrupted 
by  the  discordant  sound  of  a  horn.  "Is  that 
the  Gjallarhorn,"  exclaims  the  bold  Jarl, 
"that  invited  us  to  Valhalla?  Or  is  it  the 
toothorn  of  the  festive  hoodlum?"  The  door 
of  the  hall  is  flung  open,  an  icy  blast  of  the 
snowstorm  enters. 

"  In  Balder's  name,  shut  that  door," 
orders  the  Jarl;  "even  the  San  Francisco 
Morning  Call  would  declare  that  weather 
more  than  partly  cloudy.  It  is  enough  to 
give  rheumatism  to  a  rhinoceros,  and  at 
present  I  am  oscillating  between  the  regu- 
lar school  and  homoeopathy,  since  I  found 
out  that  the  same  liquid  that  cures  the  bite 
of  the  rattlesnake  has  the  power  to  produce 
the  same  reptile  in  the  boots,  as  I  am  con- 
vinced by  my  own  experience." 

Then  a  rumbling  and  clanking  noise  is 
heard  as  if  a  tinshop  was  tumbling  down 
a  flight  of  stairs,  and  in  steps  Viking  Brom- 
ley the  Terrible  in  full  armor. 

"  May  Odin,  Thor,  and  Balder  protect 
thee,  valiant  Viking  Bromley,"  exclaims 


202          THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

the  Jarl.  "Sit  down  and  have  a  horn  of 
our  mead." 

"The  bold  Jarl  will  excuse  me.  I  took 
a  vessel  near  the  Straits  of  Gibraltar  loaded 
with  wine  from  the  island  of  Cyprus.  My 
men  are  bringing  the  casks." 

Hearing  these  words,  Hero  Damm  spits 
his  mead  secretly  on  the  floor,  Burke  Thirs- 
tenson  empties  his  horn  hastily  into  his 
throat;  both  are  ready  for  Cyprus. 

"And  what  do  you  bring  besides?"  asked 
the  bold  Jarl. 

"The  China  mail  and  two  beautiful 
Greek  maidens,"  was  the  answer. 

"Let  them  enter  to  gladden  the  hearts  of 
my  warriors  by  song  and  dance." 

And  a  pair  of  Greek  maidens,  fair  as  the 
day,  dance  gracefully  into  the  hall,  wreaths 
in  their  hair  and  garlands  in  their  hands. 
They  look  very  much  like  brothers  Belknap 
and  Swan.  Standing  on  one  leg,  they 
spread  gracefully  their  arms  and  sing  an 
ode  of  Anacreon  on  forensic  medicine. 

"Where  is  the  scald  that  sings  the  gallant 


THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL.  203 

deeds  of  our  own  sword  and  those  of  our 
gallant  warriors?"  asked  the  bold  Jarl. 

And  Bear  the  Virtuous,  well  versed  in 
ancient  lore  and  of  venerable  appearance, 
walks  up  to  the  elevated  seat  and  sings  be- 
fore the  Jarl  a  beautiful  song  of  Hagbart 
and  fair  Signe,  and  how  Signe  followed  her 
lord  and  master  to  the  funeral  pyre,  where 
she  was  burned  with  all  her  treasures  and 
the  gold  of  her  teeth,  filled  by  Dr.  Younger, 
and  her  library  of  dry-goods  bills ;  and  then 
he  sings  into  the  golden  strings  of  his  harp 
of  ancient  times,  and  how  Christmas  was 
celebrated  with  our  glorious  ancestors ;  and 
then  he  puts  his  harp  into  his  coat  pocket, 
walks  gracefully  up  to  the  Jarl,  and  asks  for 
a  drink. 


IDEAL    BOHEMIA. 

WHEN  I  received  a  notice  from  our  most 
gracious  Sire  that  he  expected  me  to  make 
some  appropriate  remarks  on  Ideal  Bo- 
hemia, I  immediately  began  to  ponder  on 
the  beauties  of  Bohemia,  the  high  objects  of 
its  organization,  and  the  inscrutable  wis- 
dom of  our  most  gracious  Sire  in  having 
appointed  me  to  lecture  on  such  an  exalted 
subject.  From  pondering  over  this  subject, 
my  mind  soon  fell  to  wandering,  a  habit  to 
which  I  incline  more  or  less  after  nine 
o'clock  P.  M.,  and  roamed  through  the  vast 
realms  of  other  memorable  things.  I  made 
some  exceedingly  valuable  discoveries.  Ex- 
perience has  shown  me  the  lamentable  fate 
of  all  my  discoveries  made  after  nine 
o'clock  P.  M. — I  do  not  recollect  them  the 


206          THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

following  morning.  Therefore,  this  time  I 
reduced  the  result  of  my  philosophical  re- 
searches to  writing,  and  I  am  here  to  en- 
lighten you  on  inscrutable  things  in  general 
and  the  different  species  of  inscrutable  wis- 
dom in  particular. 

Amongst  inscrutable  things  there  are 
three  that  have  occupied  the  human  mind 
in  all  ages.  It  is  immensity  of  time,  also 
called  "Eternity";  immensity  of  space,  or 
the  "Universe" ;  and,  thirdly,  the  boundary 
line  between  necessity  and  free  will. 

Of  the  immensity  of  time  anybody  can 
form  an  idea  who  enters  a  dentist's  office 
and  finds  there  a  notice:  "Doctor  back  in 
five  minutes."  These  five  minutes  are  an 
immensity  of  time. 

As  to  immensity  of  space,  a  San  Fran- 
cisco horse-car  is  a  good  illustration — a  uni- 
verse that  has  room  for  another  universe 
and  plenty  of  room  on  the  top. 

As  to  the  boundary-line  between  capacity 
and  free  drinks,  its  limitation  is  found  by 
multiplying  capacity  by  the  figure  of  ready 


THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL.  207 

cash,  and  then  adding  the  credit  strained  to 
its  utmost  extent  in  regard  to  time  and  place. 
The  most  useful  of  inscrutable  things  is 
the  inscrutable  wisdom  of  Divine  Provi- 
dence, which  is  indispensable  to  the  daily 
press.  For  example:  It  has  pleased  the 
inscrutable  wisdom  of  Divine  Providence 
to  take  from  our  midst  our  dearly  beloved 
mother-in-law,  Barbara  Scoldum.  Now, 
there  is  something  incomprehensible  at  first 
look  in  this  action  of  inscrutable  wisdom. 
Divine  Providence  in  taking  that  particular 
mother-in-law  will  soon  find  that  he  has 
caught  a  tartar.  But,  in  carefully  studying 
up  the  case,  we  will  find  that  inscrutable 
wisdom  keeps  a  place  in  some  distant  part 
of  its  premises  where  all  the  good  mothers- 
in-law  go,  which  place  will  be  considerably 
warmed  up  immediately  after  the  arrival  of 
mothers-in-law.  There  is  an  arrangement 
that  as  soon  as  the  thermometer  of  that 
place  sinks  below  the  temperature  of  Fort 
Yuma  a  mother-in-law  is  introduced  to  save 
fuel.  The  natural  philosopher  calls  this  ar- 


208          THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

rangement  economy  of  nature.  The  heated 
term  by  which  we  were  visited  a  fortnight 
ago  was  caused  by  an  accumulation  of 
mothers-in-law  who  had  to  remain  in  the 
sphere  of  our  planet  until  accommodations 
would  be  provided  for  them  in  the  place  of 
their  destination. 

Sometimes  it  is  a  difficult  task  to  investi- 
gate the  intentions  of  inscrutable  wisdom; 
for  instance,  the  use  of  the  heads  of  some 
of  our  City  Fathers.  Their  heads  are 
neither  useful  nor  ornamental;  they  are  not 
made  for  brainwork.  We  can  prove,  by  a 
post  mortem,  to  their  owners7  own  satisfac- 
tion that  their  heads  are  empty.  But  they 
serve  a  higher  purpose ;  they  keep  the  neck- 
tie in  its  proper  position. 

The  coast  of  California  has  passed 
through  violent  convulsions  and  cataclysms. 
Since  the  glacial  period  the  coast  has  been 
submerged  and  raised  to  Alpine  elevations. 
There  is  no  mining  stock  that  has  passed 
through  such  vicissitudes  of  ups  and  downs 
as  the  hills  and  plains  of  California.  Bi- 


THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL.  209 

valves  and  remains  of  marine  crustaceans 
have  been  found  on  the  tops  of  the  Sierras, 
and  an  empty  sardine-box  has  been  discov- 
ered by  me  in  the  picturesque  wildernesses 
of  Second-Street  cut,  which  may  be  in- 
spected at  the  rooms  of  our  Academy  of 
Sciences. 

To  protect  us  against  further  disturb- 
ances of  level,  against  tidal  waves  and 
sudden  upheavals,  inscrutable  wisdom  of 
Divine  Providence  has  created  Captain 
Kenzel,  who  keeps  the  coast  line  of  the 
Pacific  in  its  present  position. 

Now,  everything  would  be  smooth  and 
Divine  Providence  all  right  if  it  were  not 
for  the  California  Legislature  that  runs  a 
biennial  opposition  line  to  inscrutable 
wisdom.  But  even  with  this  defect,  this 
world  is  a  good  world,  and  even  our  most 
gracious  Sire,  with  the  assistance  of  all  the 
members  of  the  Sideboard  Committee,  could 
not  have  created  a  better  one. 


ON    EVOLUTION. 

THE  source  of  all  organic  life  is  the  cell. 
From  the  simple  cell,  which  constitutes  the 
monad  in  the  animal  kingdom  and  the 
bacillus  in  the  series  of  vegetable  develop- 
ments, branch  off  innumerable  evolutionary 
series  of  types. 

The  system  of  cellular  development  may 
be  brought  under  three  heads: 

i st.  The  development  in  one  line:  <«xoro 
In  this  manner  originates  the  necklace, 
bracelet,  and  the  watch-chain. 

2d.  The  cellular  development  in  a  plain 
£§§8o  In  this  way  is  formed  the  caviar 
sandwich. 

All  other  organisms  are  the  product  of 
cubic  development. 

The  enormous  variety  of  organic  types 
is  not  the  product  of  a  short  period;  it  is 


212  THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

the  result  of  ages  spent  in  natural  selection 
and  other  rational  enjoyments. 

The  change  of  types  which  I  am  here  to 
demonstrate  begins  in  the  post-pliocene  age. 
The  post-pliocene  age  we  divide  first  in  the 
age  of  stone  implements,  which  is  followed 
by  the  age  of  brass.  In  this  age  mankind 
got  very  degenerate  in  morals,  so  that,  for 
the  sake  of  their  transgressions,  a  Board  of 
Supervisors  was  set  over  them.  No  sooner 
was  this  board  in  power,  when  an  extension 
was  proposed  of  the  Libyan  and  Arabian 
desert  and  passed.  Then  the  Mississippi 
River  was  forced  to  run  through  the  Fifth- 
Street  sewer,  which  sewer  was  repaired  in 
the  middle  of  the  rainy  season.  This  caused 
a  great  flood,  and  the  term  antediluvian, 
which  we  use  in  the  Academy  of  Sciences, 
refers  to  the  time  before  that  event.  The 
flood  caused  the  age  of  brass,  after  which 
followed  the  age  of  iron,  and  at  present  we 
are  in  the  middle  of  the  age  of  steel. 

After  this  explanation,  the  changes  which 
have  taken  place  in  the  structure  of  some 


THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL.  213 

organisms  during  these  long  periods  can 
easily  be  followed  from  the  gray  dawn  of 
antediluvian  existence  up  to  their  present 
perfect  organization. 

When  we,  for  instance,  remember  the 
well-known  fact  of  a  post-pliocene  grass- 
hopper developing  by  natural  selection  in 
the  course  of  ages  into  a  race-horse,  we  will 
no  longer  be  astonished  when  by  popular 
election  a  clodhopper  develops  into  a 
regent  of  a  university.  A  prominent 
clergyman,  combining  by  natural  selection 
Darwinism  and  sacred  history,  has  called 
this  law,  in  a  popular  lecture,  "  inverted 
comic  action" — or  was  it  conic  action? — "of 
irradiating  ether."  Here  are  a  few  ex- 
amples : 


You  see  how  an  antediluvian  snail  has 
been  transformed  into  the  inkstand  of  the 
present  age,  a  circumstance  which  accounts, 
perhaps,  for  the  extraordinary  laziness  of 


214          THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

certain  members  of  the  daily  press  and  this 
Bohemian  Club. 

Here  you  see  a  dinotherium : 


He  looks  very  much  like  the  African 
hippopotamus,  but  his  African  sympathies 
are  not  real.  In  his  present  stage  of  de- 
velopment he  is  born  in  the  north,  but  feeds 
in  the  south. 

Now,  reflecting  on  these  facts  and  looking 
forward  into  the  past  of  antediluvian  times, 
we  find  everywhere  the  footprints  of  the 
finger  of  a  mighty  creative  power. 


ON    GERMS. 

ONE  of  the  most  powerful  inventions  of 
the  nineteenth  century  is  the  germ  theory. 
The  germ,  also  called  microbe,  leads  in  its 
wild  state  a  migratory  life, — that  is,  he  is 
always  found  where  he  ought  not  to  be; 
afterwards  he  takes  to  different  liquids  and 
becomes  cultivated.  In  this  circumstance 
the  microbe  resembles  some  young  men 
who  are  shiftless  and  spend  their  school 
hours  by  being  found  where  they  ought  not 
to  be,  and  then  take  different  liquors.  Such 
young  men  never  will  pass  their  examina- 
tion and  they  will  not  graduate,  but  become 
members  of  the  Board  of  Education  or  book 
agents,  and  will  have  to  recite  in  their  old 
age  lessons  on  the  germ  theory. 


2l6          THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

According  to  the  custom  of  this  college, 
we  will  now  look  on  the  microbe  under 
three  heads : 

i st.  The  microbe  as  an  organism. 

2d.  The  microbe  as  a  fellow-citizen. 

3d.  The  microbe  in  his  or  her  matri- 
monial relations. 

First,  the  microbe  as  an  organism  appears 
in  different  forms,  which  have  received  dif- 
ferent names:  bacterium,  bacillus,  vibrio, 
spirillum,  and  many  others ;  all  of  which  I 
knew  this  morning,  and  with  which  Miss 
Allbustle,  who  is  our  principal,  is  perfectly 
acquainted  and  on  terms  of  intimacy.  All 
these  organisms  agree  on  one  point — they 
gobble  up  all  oxygen  on  which  they  can  lay 
hand  and  make  it  hot  for  the  neighborhood 
which  Miss  Allbustle  calls  "Surrounding 
medium."  By  this  process,  in  a  way  per- 
fectly known  to  Miss  Allbustle,  they  cause 
fermentation  and  inflict  incalculable  misery 
on  the  human  race;  because,  if  there  were 
no  fermentation,  there  would  not  be  intoxi- 
cating drinks ;  if  there  were  no  intoxicating 


THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL.  217 

drinks,  there  would  be  no  transgression ;  if 
there  were  no  transgression,  there  would  not 
be  sin. 

I  now  come  to  the  microbe  as  a  fellow- 
citizen.  As  such  the  microbe  is  exceedingly 
useful  to  the  medical  profession,  the  drug- 
store, and  the  sale  of  microscopes.  He  can 
raise  an  epidemic  on  a  moment's  notice,  and 
is  cultivated  for  this  purpose  either  in  gela- 
tine or  beef-tea.  Whenever  the  state  of  a 
community  becomes  melancholily  healthy, 
the  same  cultivated  and  well-trained  bac- 
teria are  let  loose  on  the  community,  and 
our  doctors  and  the  sister  of  Miss  Allbustle, 
who  is  a  female  medical  man,  have  more 
business  on  hand  than  they  can  attend  to. 
Formerly,  before  the  microbe  became  edu- 
cated and  cultivated,  and  was  examined,  and 
had  to  graduate  as  a  microbe,  the  doctors 
had  to  go  to  the  mountains  to  lasso  some 
wild  bacteria,  which  is  a  dangerous  enter- 
prise. Some  bacteria  have  a  spiral  shape, 
somewhat  like  a  snake  or  a  corkscrew.  They 
derive  their  name,  "spirillum,"  either  from 


21 8  THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

spiral  or  spirits,  and  are  the  cause  of  an 
affection  called  "Filtririum  clemens." 

Thirdly,  the  microbe  in  his  or  her  matri- 
monial relations :  The  microbe  is  not  very 
affectionate.  He  can  be  tamed  and  made  to 
follow  his  master,  but  he  never,  never  will 
love  you.  He  propagates  by  separation 
pretty  much  as  they  do  in  Indiana.  So  he 
multiplies  by  division,  and  in  producing 
several  individuals  he  loses  his  own  indi- 
viduality. 

Now,  if  we  consider  all  these  losses  and 
difficulties,  ought  we  not  to  be  thankful? 


ADDRESS   TO   THE    MAYOR. 

THIS  time  I  am  not  taken  by  surprise.  I 
know  I  am  always  called  for  late  at  night, 
like  the  loose  troops  that  cover  the  retreat  of 
the  really  valuable  army;  and  as  it  is  a 
great  strain  on  my  nerves  to  keep  sober  a 
whole  evening,  I  have  committed  my  ideas 
to  paper,  and  this  is  my  extempore  speech. 

Brother  Phelan,  I  am  here  not  only  to 
congratulate  you,  because  a  man  who  has 
been  found  worthy  to  govern  the  Bohemian 
Club  can  derive  but  little  satisfaction  from 
the  dignity  of  being  Mayor  of  San  Fran- 
cisco, but  I  am  here  to  give  you  advice. 
This  city,  inhabited  by  honest,  hard-drink- 
ing men,  has  many  grievances.  Our  pave- 
ment, for  instance,  is  of  great  importance. 
Climate  and  habits  dispose  us  to  gout.  You 
recollect  Dr.  Arthur  Stout,  the  inveterate 


220          THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

punster  of  this  organization.  He  frequently 
said,  "Chaqu'un  a  son  gout."  Pavement  is 
of  great  consequence  to  elderly  gentlemen. 
It  always  touches  my  heart  to  see  a  friend, 
when  crossing  the  street,  how  carefully  he 
treats  the  cobblestones  of  our  pavements. 
Public  property  must  be  treated  with  con- 
sideration. 

Now,  there  is  a  place  whose  access  is 
paved  by  good  intentions.  Why  not  use  the 
same  material  for  paving  this  good  city?  I 
own  the  material  is  rather  friable,  but  there 
is  such  a  supply  of  it,  and  our  City  Fathers 
are  on  such  excellent  terms  with  the  owner 
of  that  place,  that  they  may  get  the  material 
at  a  nominal  expense. 

In  the  hope  that  you  will  follow  this  dis- 
interested suggestion,  I  am  convinced  that  a 
man  who  has  filled  the  presidential  chair  of 
this  important  organization  will  find  it  an 
easy  task  to  rule  an  insignificant  city  like 
San  Francisco. 


ON    FISHES. 

My  remarks  on  FISHES  will  be  dis- 
tributed under  three  heads : 

i st.  The  definition:  What  is  a  FlSH? 

ad.  Classification  of  FISHES. 

3d.  Spiritual  advice. 

According  to  the  generally  adopted  defi- 
nition, a  fish  is  a  vertebrate  animal  that 
breathes  through  gills.  Everybody  sees 
that  this  is  a  very  superficial  definition ;  for 
we  have  not  time  always  to  look  for  a 
spinal  column,  and  as  for  the  gills,  they  are 
generally  removed  by  the  cook. 

My  definition  is :  A  fish  is  an  aquatic  ani- 
mal without  feet  and  without  hair.  Some- 
body might  say  this  definition  will  embrace 
also  the  snake ;  but  the  snake  is  amphibious, 
— he  can  live  both  in  the  water  and  in  the 
boots. 


222  THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

The  fish  is  essentially  without  hair. 
Fish's  hair-oil  has  been  tried  at  different 
times  by  several  members  of  our  Academy 
of  Sciences  on  their  own  heads,  without  pro- 
ducing anything  like  the  desired  effect. 

The  fish  has  no  feet,  which  circumstance 
saves  him  a  world  of  trouble;  having  no 
feet,  he  has  no  big  toe;  having  no  big  toe, 
he  has  no  gout;  having  no  gout,  he  is  not 
suffering  from  the  pavements  of  this  good 
city. 

I  had  invited  a  good  friend  to  assist  at 
this  symposium;  I  am  sorry  to  say  that  he 
was  prevented  by  an  attack  of  his  old  enemy, 
the  gout. 

This  good  friend  has  suggested  at  differ- 
ent times  a  method  how  to  improve  the 
pavement  of  San  Francisco  for  the  benefit 
of  the  gouty  members  of  this  community, 
who  represent  a  considerable  proportion, 
and  at  the  same  time  to  settle  that  most 
vexing  question  about  asphalt,  basalt,  and 
Nicholson. 

My  friend  refers  to  a  well-known  place 


THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL.  223 

paved  by  good  intentions.  As  our  public 
officers  always  have  been  on  excellent  terms 
with  the  owner  of  that  place,  they  easily 
could  obtain  the  material  at  a  nominal 
price. 

We  all  know  with  what  facility  the  mate- 
rial is  to  be  manipulated;  it  is  true  it  has  no 
great  power  of  resistance  and  will  want  fre- 
quent repairs,  but  then  there  is  such  an 
enormous  supply  of  it. 

In  regard  to  the  classification  of  fishes: 
We  have  an  artificial  system  and  a  natural 
system.  The  artificial  system  takes  up  a 
single  character  for  classification,  but  the 
natural  system  compares  carefully  all  the 
characters,  and  judges  from  the  totality  in 
which  style  the  fish  ought  to  be  served. 
Aquatic  as  their  habits  may  be,  all  good 
fishes  when  cooked  are  served  with  white 
wine,  and  this  is  in  the  animal  kingdom  the 
first  instance  of  the  better  hereafter  that 
awaits  us. 

According  to  the  artificial  system,  fishes 
are  divided  into  those  with  a  bony  skeleton 


224  THE     HOOT     OF     THE     OWL- 

and  those  with  a  cartilaginous  skeleton.  In 
the  first  group  belongs  the  eel,  which  is  the 
only  hermaphrodite  amongst  vertebrates.  I 
know  this  is  very  immoral,  but  it  is  arranged 
so  by  Nature,  and  I  am  ashamed  of  Nature. 
Not  so  the  eel ;  he  leads  a  life  of  permanent 
matrimonial  bliss,  interrupted  only  by  an 
annual  marriage  trip  to  the  sea  coast,  where, 
after  having  propagated,  he  leaves  his  off- 
spring to  the  benevolent  attentions  of  sharks 
and  other  fishes.  At  a  moment's  notice  he 
withdraws  to  places  inaccessible  to  his 
creditors.  Amongst  the  fishes  with  a  carti- 
laginous skeleton,  the  most  remarkable  is 
the  sturgeon,  whose  eggs  are  called  caviar, 
and  here  comes  my  spiritual  advice. 
Never!  never  mistake  caviar  for  blackberry 
jam! 


ON    BUTTERFLIES. 

IT  is  impossible  for  me  to  tell  anything 
new  to  this  enlightened  body  of  Bohemians, 
because  everything  that  was  in  me  has  been 
brought  out  on  former  occasions,  and  what 
little  brain  is  left  I  want  for  myself.  But 
noticing  here  the  presence  of  Dr.  Swan  and 
Judge  Boalt,  my  old  rivals  in  science,  I  am 
afraid  they  will  trespass  on  the  sacred 
ground  of  entomology,  as  they  have  done 
before ;  and  so,  for  the  protection  of  science, 
I  will  sacrifice  myself,  as  I  have  done 
before,  and  occupy  your  valuable  time  with 
a  lecture  on  butterflies. 

The  butterfly  lays  eggs  like  the  hen,  but 
differs  from  the  hen  by  laying  her  eggs  but 
once  in  her  lifetime.  From  the  egg  comes  a 
caterpillar,  or,  as  Judge  Boalt  justly  ob- 
served, a  worm.  The  whole  occupation  of 


226          THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL. 

this  worm  consists  in  eating.  His  whole  ex- 
istence is  a  prolonged  dinner-party.  Sev- 
eral times  he  changes  his  dress  by  bursting 
it  on  his  back  and  throwing  it  off,  a  new, 
well-fitting,  unpaid  dress  being  already  un- 
derneath. When  entirely  satisfied  he  goes 
to  sleep,  calls  himself  a  chrysalis,  and  awakes 
as  a  butterfly.  This  new  existence  begins 
with  making  love  all  around  and  gaining 
the  mutual  admiration  of  both  sexes.  Then 
he  takes  to  morals,  matrimony,  and  a  wed- 
ding trip ;  after  which  he  dies,  before  mak- 
ing the  acquaintance  of  his  mother-in-law. 
In  the  stage  of  butterfly  he  dispenses  en- 
tirely with  solid  food  and  relies  altogether 
on  liquid  substances,  which  he  calls  nectar 
and  we  call  drink.  Now,  you  see  his  first 
stage  of  existence  is  a  continuous  dinner- 
party; then  comes  a  period  of  digestion  and 
rest,  after  which  a  system  of  free  love  and 
drink  all  around;  but  in  no  stage  work,  if 
he  can  help  it. 

In  this  latter  peculiarity  the  butterfly  re- 
sembles the  oyster,  from  which,  in  other  re- 


THE    HOOT    OF    THE    OWL.  227 

spects,  it  is  not  difficult  to  distinguish  him. 
The  butterfly  leads  an  aerial  life ;  the  oyster 
lives  on  the  bosom  of  the  ocean,  in  localities 
inaccessible  to  his  creditors.  Most  species 
of  the  oyster  are  hermaphroditic — they  pos- 
sess both  kinds  of  sexual  organs.  Therefore, 
the  oyster  enjoys  the  rapture  of  the  lover  and 
of  the  beloved,  and  thus  on  the  bosom  of  the 
ocean  (which  is  at  the  same  time  the  bottom 
of  the  ocean)  he  enjoys  a  life  of  uninter- 
rupted matrimonial  bliss.  But,  besides  this 
blessing,  the  oyster  is  entitled  to  the  proud 
distinction  of  being  present  at  all  banquets 
given  by  the  Bohemian  Club;  and  I  am 
charged  by  the  oyster  to  express  on  this  oc- 
casion his  thanks  for  the  honor  of  his  invi- 
tation and  his  wish  that  such  invitation  may 
be  extended  to  him  at  all  further  celebra- 
tions, and  especially  our  Golden  Anni- 
versary, when,  twenty-five  years  hence,  he 
hopes  to  meet  you  all  again. 


"~ 


LOAN  DEPT. 


LD  2lA-50m-8  '57 
(C8481slO)476B 


